Went to do some Christmas shopping and the DTS was starting kinda slow, even though I've been keeping the battery topped up on a maintainer periodically due to my limited usage right now. I had a 'new' (1 year old) AC Delco battery, the correct group 79 (which is really obscure, only a handful of GMs used it), on hand, so I figured I'd swap it out proactively. Battery is under the rear seat in the DTS, so I was not looking forward to it, but I was surprised....Keeping the battery in the car has some merits; all the connections are nice and clean, as is the hold down, so no corrosion or dirt to deal with. I used a booster pack on the jump points under the hood to keep the car powered up during the swap too, so no need to reset everything. 20 minutes flat, including getting the battery and tools out.
Starts great now, and I have peace of mind knowing it's got a fresh battery. Old battery was an Interstate dated 2015, so not terribly old, but probably due.
The dealer gave me a quote to swap the 12V battery on the A3 - $1,044. The part itself is nearly $700, the rest involves between 3 and 4 hours of dark forest rituals, secret codes and proprietary software.
WHAT?
Nuts! Could it be some special Li-ion 12V battery?
Another reason why I will always run 'old junk', even if I was in a position to drop that kind of money on a battery replacement, I could never justify it. That $700 (or $1000) is just so much better elsewhere.
The DTS replacement cost me $0. When I bought the chrome wheels and tires off a seller who had recently scrapped his high km DTS (he had a mint low km example as well) so mentioned that he had a new battery that had only been in the car a few weeks before something failed (power steering) and he decided to scrap the car. So I talked him into including the battery in the deal on the wheels - knowing that mine was of unknown age, I figured it would come in handy.
If I went out and bought a new battery, say at CTC, it would be $300 since the DTS uses a massive single battery that's an obscure group size.