Should I buy this battery?

[Donald360]

067 Alphaline Car Battery 12V 68AH
Ebay item no. 251142975997

Any good? Seems a good price at £56.50 with free delivery.

Feedback or advice appreciated.
Cheers
Donald

[California Dreamin]

Not bad and does have a 4 year warranty....but I reckon this one is a better brand and more powerful at about £3.00 more but 3 year warranty...

Enter Promo code BATTERY 15 to get 15% discount....post is free.

http://www.eurocarparts.com/ecp/c/Volks ... 0d2&000020" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Martin

[scunnerd25]

A fifer spending money omg i will have to sit down lol

[Donald360]

We've thrown so much money at this van. What hurts is that it's still not running yet. Waiting on a carb repair, then hopefully she will be good to go again. It's ok though, I'm originally from Glasgow so not a true Fifer really.

Decided to go for the Exide that was mentioned above. Now I'm just reeling from the price of leisure batteries as it is needing replaced as well.

Cheers
Donald

[scunnerd25]

When do you think you will have it running. If i can help in any way just give me a shout

[Donald360]

It will be a few weeks yet before I get the carb back and in place. After that its just a case of making sure all the electrics are working as they should and we should be back on the road.

One of the first things I'll be doing is going down to SynchroNutz to complain about how quickly their paint job is deteriorating in places - very annoying as it cost us an arm and a leg

Cheers
Donald

[Ralf85]

How long ago did you get the paintwork done? What did you have done eg sand blasted, panels replaced etc?

[Donald360]

Your simple question is threatening to open a big can of worms, but I will try to keep it brief.

SyncroNutz did a lot of work on the van. We gave it to them in Sept 2010, but the work was not completed until Jan/Feb 2011. The work requested was to to strip out all rusty panels and restore the bodywork with replacement panels and then complete with a respray to a new colour. I'm tempted to go into a LOT of detail here but in a nutshell we had over £1500 of panels and welding together with about £500 of other parts including exhaust and new rubbers and seals and over £3.5k for labour costs. Total bill was over £5.5k so you would expect at that price to get a top notch job - which was how it appeared.

We were unhappy that the work had to be done through a very wet, snowy and frosty winter but there was little we could do once the work had started. The van looked really great when we picked it up in the new year but we soon had to bring it back (a considerable distance) a couple of times as there was a leak at the windscreen - eventually sorted with a lot of sealant.

We used the van over the summer, but were having increasing mechanical problems, which in the end put the van off the road for about a year (until the present day). In addition, a series of family and health crises meant that there was no time to sort out our growing concerns about the condition of the van's bodywork. During the summer we had noticed a few rust bubbles appearing and also signs of rusty stains along some panel edges. However circumstances meant that we were unable to take the van back at that time. Of course these signs of rust have only worsened since that time. I am hopeful that new batteries and a soon to be renovated carburettor will finally get the van running again. It would be another long post to detail the mechanical work that has also taken place in the last year.

In my opinion, the paint job has not been carried out as well as I would have wanted. There seems to be a lack of attention to undercoating and final coating of the thin panel edges (ie, around wheel arches and along the edge of the gutters). Also it is alarming that there are a few places where rust bubbles are appearing under the new paint - and I'm not talking about the seams, which are looking fine after being blasted and cleaned well before filling and painting.

So, timescale - we're talking about 18 months since the work was finished. However we saw the first signs of deterioration only 3 or 4 months after picking the van up. It is really sad to be so dissatisfied after spending a considerable amount at a garage that seemed to have such a good reputation.

Anyway - looking forward to getting the old girl back on the road.
Cheers
Donald.

[scunnerd25]

Och that sounds sore i was there a few weeks ago and the guy i spoke to said he bought the company from the guy that used to run it and now only half the garage is for vw's but i dont know when all that happened

[Donald360]

I've had a look for any information about what's going on with Syncronutz and it sounds as if Russ has moved permanently to South Africa and the business is now in the hands of Ian McGill. It also seems that Ian has scaled back the amount of restoration work considerably and is concentrating on other aspects of T25 sales etc. Reading between the lines I reckon I would be banging my head against a wall trying to achieve anything by complaining now about a job they did 18 months ago. I think I will go elsewhere for some advice on how to patch up the paint blemishes before they inevitably get worse.

Cheers
D

[LeeME3]

For leisure batteries I got one of these http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004 ... 04_s00_i00" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and am very pleased with it. Sadly currently listed as not available though...

[Donald360]

For a leisure battery, I went for this in the end

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/170843872943? ... 257wt_1165" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And for a road battery

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/290710527718? ... 1439.l2649" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Hoping these will do the trick.

[CovKid]

Hard to beat the Euro Car Parts batteries. As for the paint, If I were spraying I wouldn't want to give a cast iron guarantee that rust won't appear again. Thats why so many of us roller with a rust-inhibiting paint. If you do get rust bubbles later on, you simply sand back, sort it and re-roller. Once you've had several years of a rust-free body, spraying might be worthwhile but on these old beasts, there are very few around that will look minters for very long under a fresh coat of paint. They need constant checking prior to going that far - in my view.

[Donald360]

Turns out the leisure battery is too long to fit under thge seat so I'm looking for a slightly smaller one. I'm wondering if it reallt needs to be a proper 'leisure' type - my main concern is maintaining a good enough voltage for the Propex as we got caught out on one cold trip when the van was stationary for a couple of days and I couldn't figure out why the heater conked out.

As to the paint job. This was done after extensive cutting away and replacement of rusty panels. Would a Rustolum 'repair' work on top of the existing paint?

Cheers D

[California Dreamin]

Doesn't have to be a leisure battery, as long as you are not in the habit of letting your batteries discharge to very low levels.
Proper leisure batteries are designed for 'deep cycle' use....they can withstand more flat to full charge abuse. Where as car batteries do not like to be flattened/recharged and won't last long under these conditions.
However...if you are like me, charge then discharge to no more than 50%... car batteries are fine.

Martin