Q: My car has low battery voltage - 2015 Toyota RAV4
I'm considering buying a used car from an individual and during the maintenance inspection done by a YourMechanic professional, the only issue that came up was that he marked the battery volts as being "less than 12.5 volts". He also uploaded two photos that I feel are related...
The first showing a screen shot of his testing device's screen and contained the following info:
Starter Test Charge Battery (in yellow text) Crank Volt: 6.75V Volt Percent: 38% Crank Time: 644 ms
The second photo was this:
Charge Test Normal (in green text) Loads volt: 13.81 V Loads off volt: 14.04 V
Can anyone translate what all that would mean? If the vehicle is in a big city and not being driven on the highway much, could that be the cause of the battery volts being low? Any of this cause for any real concern?
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Hello. From that test, I can determine that the charging system, as in the alternator, is fine. The voltage of the battery itself is very low, however. The starting volts are dropping way below the minimum, which means that the battery needs to be replaced. If you want to prevent the car from having any issues with the vehicle starting, I would replace the battery as soon as you have a chance.
If you are going to have the battery replaced, have one of YourMechanic’s certified mechanics come back out to you to replace it for your.
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