Two Ways to Charge Your Vehicle’s Battery

Regardless of whether it has a traditional or hybridized powertrain, every car that has an internal combustion engine has a car battery. Learning how to charge a car battery is an absolute must if you want to avoid making preventable appointments to bring your automobile to our Chevy service center. Luckily, contacting Gillman Chevrolet Harlingen is all you need to do to learn how to keep your battery charged.

Drive at Highway Speeds Regularly

Far and away, the easiest way to charge a car battery is to drive your vehicle at highway speeds a few times per week. It's advisable to drive at highway speeds for at least 30 minutes per outing. If you've recently had to jumpstart your automobile, you may want to take longer trips, particularly during outings taken shortly after you needed a jump.

Some drivers may suggest that you idle your vehicle for 15 - 20 minutes to recharge the battery. While that may work in older automobiles, it's not an advisable way to charge a more modern car battery. Today's cars typically have sophisticated battery management systems. Those systems limit an automobile's ability to charge when RPMs are on the lower side, which means idling won't always help a battery recharge.

Use a Battery Charger

Keeping your battery charged can extend its useful life by months. If you can't drive your automobile at highway speeds often enough, you should order a battery charger from our Chevy auto parts center. Depending on your needs, you might want to get a smart or automatic charger, a trickle charger, or a maintainer.

Using a battery charger is an easy task if you know how. The key to charging a battery safely is to never allow the battery's negative clamp or terminal to come into contact with the charger's clamps. Here are the steps to charge your battery:

• Verify your battery charger is off and unplugged
• Locate the battery's positive terminal, which is marked with a "+", and negative terminal, which has a "-" imprinted on it
• Attach the charger's red clamp to the battery's positive terminal and the black clamp to the negative terminal
• Move the charger as far away from the battery as the cables will allow
• Plug in the charger and turn it on

Charge Your Car Battery in Harlingen, TX

For more advice about charging your car battery, we invite you to visit our Harlingen, TX Chevy dealership. Does your vehicle need a new battery? Look through our Chevy parts offers now.