.In battery discussions, noticed no mention of what indicates a battery is low in charge. My 911 turbo starter will turn over briefly, then everything dead at first try. Then turn off the key and try again and the starter starts the engine fine. Porsche tech says this indicates battery is low and must be charged by some thing besides the car alternator (like our mini charger), He says the alternator does a poor job unless you make a lot of long drives in the daytime. ....anyone with same experience with having to hit the starter twice to start the car?? I thought it was the immobilizer, but tech says no.
Also how are the new Walmart batteries (94R) working???

 

Mine was 2008 original battery - starts seemed OK maybe a little slow, kept on maintainer when not driven and I didn't notice any unusually long charging times. One day very slow to crank, put on the maintainer overnight and next day one crank and dead...so I think it's time for you to replace. The 94R is great plus if it does go bad you won't have to argue with Porsche about the requisite number of miles driven in a 12 month period.

 

With your Walmart battery, do you still use the mini charger or are you free of that crutch?
So your original equipment battery only lasted a couple years?
Tech's say Porsche batteries are poor batteries. Seems a shame, for the money the car costs and for how well built it is, that a better battery cannot be installed when new.

 

I only use the maintainer if I know I won't be driving the car foe 3 or 4 days - I have a quick disconnect plug directly to the terminals so it's easy for me to hookup. OEM battery lasted 3 years from date of delivery which from what I read is about par for the course - some report 5 or 6 years others much less. I just like the piece of mind knowing the battery won't let me down. You'll find similar stories in the BMW forums - car manufacturers try to keep their costs down and batteries seem to be one of the areas. Probably why there's such a large aftermarket battery market.

 

Modern cars have a pretty good current draw even when not running for all sorts of things like security systems, memory keep alive in various systems, clocks, etc. So the "crutch" isn't battery dependent but rather due to the car. If you drive it often enough and far enough the alternator will keep the battery up well enough.

OEM batteries pretty much suck. This is a place where the OEM's cut costs. CU rates some of the wally world batteries tops in their size / class. I find that quite humorous. You'll find there's a load of after market batteries that are way better than OEM ones. It's just life with cars. The battery in my wifes Cayman went 3 years no problems, it was her DD. She now has a 2011 911TT as her DD, we'll see how that one fares. We're in FL so it's driven all year.

Since I'm not worried about weight, I'll get the biggest, heaviest, highest plate count, longest warranty period battery I can cram in there so I don't have to worry about her out somewhere with a dead battery when time comes to replace the OEM one.

--CC

 

Battery cost to manufacturer seems so trivial, especially with a Walmart batteries out the door at $75. Wonder where else serious cost greed is present?
Hands-on question with these batteries....the manual has got the car owner spooked. When you changed your battery did you have problems with PSM light going on/off?
If not, I guess putting up the windows, changing the clock are the two critical items. Correct?
Did you have any problems with the key? The manual says something about intializing the key.
Even with my M3's batteries, changing them never had this many variables to be concerned about.
thanks for your help

 

You should post the link to the charger thread you had previously.

 

I've swapped batteries on two different 997.1's - both caused the PSM light to come on (as the manual says it will) and the light goes off almost immediately once the car is driven and the steering wheel moved. I've re-indexed the windows (see manual) but the clock always figures out the correct time for me. Never an issue with keys.