I have a project car, an 83 245 dl, that had a bad wiring harness which I replaced to over come the bad wire to the alternator and future gremlins. The battery was only a year old this March but I had to jump start it all winter when I had time to let the engine run 15 minutes at a time. I finally took it into Auto Zone this past week to have it tested and charged. The guy told me it only was reading 2V and he would try and charge it. I returned a couple hours later to a sticker on the battery saying it was toast, dead, no hope. I thought about it today as I placed my battery from the 86 244 into the 245 for a little exercise of the pistons. Noticed the battery contacts where dirty on the working battery so I cleened them with a battery wire brush cleaner thing. While letting the car run I placed the "dead" battery into the 86 runner along with cleaning its contacts,which appeared to be clean terminals. The car started with no problem.

Autozone had it wrong and was maybe hoping for a sale or the terminals just needed to be clean properly. I will leave the "good" battery in the project car since its 4 years old. I would have been needing to buy two batteries in the short future but now it might be just one sometime next fall. The battery that made it 4 years and through this past cold spell is a Standard 6000 size 24, out of Washington state I believe.