Free battery testing/charging
I work for one of the major chain parts houses that do free battery testing and I can tell you for certain that most of the employees there have not been trained on proper battery testing. Our tester has settings not only for cca but also for battery types. ( standard starting, agm starting, deep cycle, optima red, optima blue, optima yellow) and I'm pretty sure that I'm the only employee there that actually changes the tester for the correct battery type. It automatically goes to "standard cranking battery" when it's turned on and I guarantee you that if you bring your battery to our store for testing or charging it won't be done right. (unless I'm there). Same goes for charging. We have 3 small 2/6 amp chargers, 3 big manual chargers (probably 20 to 30 amp/hr) and one electronic charger that pairs up with our tester with the same controls/settings. I have come to work and found group 31's on the little chargers charging 2 a/hr set on 6 volt, and lawn tractor batteries on the big red manual chargers charging at 20/30 a/hr and the acid boiled completely out of them. These people don't know and don't care. I have gone to our core bin and pulled numerous deep cycle cores and correctly charged them and had them test good after the correct charge. I currently have optima red tops in both our cars and in my truck and a blue top in my boat that were pulled from the core bin. The point I'm trying to make here is that if you go to a chain parts store to have testing and charging done, talk to someone who seems to actually know what they are doing before leaving your battery for them to ruin.
