Checking Car Battery Voltage With Multimeter

How to check car battery with multimeter.

Checking car battery voltage with multimeter.

The temperature outside affects the voltage of the battery. You can use a multimeter to find out if your battery has enough charge. Checking the voltage can be misleading because the battery may test good based on voltage but can not hold a load. This will allow you to accurately measure 0 20 volts.

The battery ratings vary a lot from car to car but choosing 15 20 volt is good enough. How to check a car battery with a multimeter. Allow us to give you a piece of advice here you should keep the headlights on for a few minutes before checking the battery. Any reading of voltage below 9 5 volts or if the battery holds a good record for a while and steadily drops or even when it falls instantly to 0 volts then it means there is a problem and the battery.

Touch the red probe to the positive terminal and the black probe to the negative terminal. Load test a car battery using a multimeter. The first test with your multimeter will measure dc voltage indicated with a solid line and a dashed line above a letter v. A car battery s voltage is dependent on the outside temperature so assuming it s 27 degrees celsius here s what you should make of the readings you see on the multimeter display.

With the headlights on at 80 f there should be a voltage drop of at least 11 8 volts 25 charged and ideally 12 5 volts between the positive and negative terminals. How to test a car battery. To be more specific. At about 80 degrees a fully charged battery will be around 12 5 12 6 volts.

Then proceed to check the reading on the multimeter display. Connect the multimeter probes to the car battery. Using your multimeter you want to measure dc voltage this is indicated with a solid line and a dashed line above a letter v. A fully charged battery ideally measures at 12 66 volts and above but 12 6 volts at 80 degrees 12 588 degrees at 30 degrees and 12 516 volts at 0 degrees are.

Set the dial to 20. In modern vehicles a load test is a better way to tell if your battery is good or needs to be replaced. Set the dial to 20 which will allow you to accurately measure between 0 20 volts.