Exchanged my defective battery. Meter showed good 6 volts but would not turn over starter or even light the lights. ( very dim ) No amperage I guess. Installed new battery and now all is well. Never had this happen to me before. Anyone else had this problem? So how do you tell that the battery is bad without taking it to a battery supplier?

A "Load Test" is a more accurate indicator of a batteries true condition then a simple voltmeter check which dont really tell you all that much unless its so bad the unloaded voltage isnt anywhere near its nominal 12.6 volts. Most supply houses perform it for free or you can buy a clamp on load tester fairly cheap, what it does is provide a fairly high current load when clamped to a battery to monitor how low the voltage drops. If you remove the caps, each cell should have electrolyte above the plates with none showing any gray or milky off color indicative of a bad cell.

John T

Thanks for picking up the phone on this one John T. I sat in on one of your seminars at the NY EXPO. Good job. This battery failure had me scratching my head for awhile. I'll shop for one of those gadgets. Many thanks. Bill

There was a battery discussion in the "Tractor Shed" just a few weeks ago. I bought one of the load testers a couple of years ago on eBay for under $30 delivered, and it has declared several "bad" batteries good so that I looked for other reasons for troubles. Kept me from tossing several batteries that are still in service....