Automotive

Capacity is the leading indicator of battery health.

Other testers measure Cold Cranking Amps (CCA) to tell you if the battery will start your car or truck today. But what about tomorrow?

Only by looking at its capacity will you know if your battery is still healthy enough to continue its job.

The Spectro CA-12 GA handheld rapid tester for auto and trucks incorporates patented Spectro™ technology to allow you to determine the capacity of lead-acid starter batteries: the leading indicator of battery health.
  • Reduced Warranty Costs: how many good batteries are you paying for under warranty? By testing the capacity, you can determine whether the battery is at the end of its life.
  • Customer Assurance: what will your customer say about you when stranded by a bad battery after just being in your shop for service?
  • Easy to Learn & Use: a simple and intuitive interface means minimal training is required to begin accurately testing batteries in your shop.
All of these benefits can be realized with a simple 15 second test.

SPECTRO CA-12 GA

Spectro CA-12 GA handheld rapid tester:
  • Analyzes reserve capacity (RC minutes or Ahr), CCA, and State-of-Charge in 15 seconds
  • Provides simple pass or fail results based on both capacity and CCA
  • Tests flooded or absorbed glass mat (AGM) batteries non-invasively
  • Saves up to 150 test results
  • Prints results on a receipt for your customer (printer sold separately)

Features

Spectro technology addresses some of the most common issues surrounding automotive battery testing:
  • The battery is given a passing grade during service and then fails soon after your customer leaves the shop
  • Too many warranty claims are for perfectly good batteries
  • Competitive approaches to determining battery health take too long or are not accurate

CAPACITY

Capacity is the ability of a battery to store energy and is the leading indicator of battery health. As batteries age, they lose the ability to store energy – in other words, the capacity degrades. The chart below shows that even a battery that is nearly dead (capacity <40%) may still pass a CCA test.

Would you want your customer to leave your shop with Battery #20?

Capacity versus CCA

Spectro Technology

The scientific description for Spectro technology is “multi-model electrochemical impedance spectroscopy”. What sets it apart from competitive testers is the use of a range, or spectrum, of pulse frequencies from 20-20,000 Hz to measure the impedance of a battery.



The use Spectro technology to test batteries results in the following:
  • More accurate CCA than other methods: competitive testers have been known to consistently give results that overestimate the CCA – a more optimistic view than reality
  • Accurate capacity estimation: various frequencies, particularly the lower ones, yield a more complete picture of battery health
  • Rapid results: all of the data needed to accurately characterize a battery is collected in 15 seconds

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