How to know the date of manufacture Bosch

The date of manufacture of the Bosch battery

Bosch is one of the leaders in the production of car batteries. Their shelf life is approximately 3 years (for comparison, other manufacturers have this figure ranges from 1 to 2.5). Therefore, when buying a Bosch battery, the date of manufacture is important, which can be determined by paying attention to the external markings.

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Bosch battery.

After 2 to 3 years of storage the technical specifications of the battery are much worse. And purchasing such a battery is not recommended.

Lead-acid batteries made with the addition of antimony, can not be stored for more than 6-10 months. The battery with silver-alloyed plates can remain in working condition from 10 to 12 months. Even calcium batteries, which have a minimum self-discharge, lose their charge after one or two years. When determining the shelf life, you should also consider the conditions in which the battery is stored.

The symptoms of battery obsolescence are

Production of batteries has sufficient volume to saturate the market with products, but it is necessary to more than cover its needs. Therefore, some of the already manufactured units ready for shipment must spend a certain amount of time in storage. There they are stored until they are shipped to the store, but they may remain in the retailer’s own warehouse for a period of time. Any downtime negatively affects the life of the battery. There are several reasons for this:

  • Corrosion of internal components. It affects the metal parts, which are excessively oxidized by the acids that make up the electrolyte.
  • Decrease in the density of the electrolytic fluid. can be a direct consequence of a drop in the charge level and the formation of sludge in the lower part of the case. Since the first charge can eliminate these deficiencies only partially, you must be prepared for the rapid replacement of the working filler.
  • Self-discharge is one of the major woes of any battery. The deep discharge condition is considered the most harmful for modern power sources, as it can lead to a rapid loss of subsequently accumulated capacity.
  • Storage conditions. Not all warehouses are equally good at protecting the battery from the negative effects of the environment. High atmospheric humidity and cold or heat are the main enemies of longevity of a lying power supply.

Any product that has been in storage for two or three years and has not been sold should be disposed of, not sold. The characteristics over this period drop so much in comparison to the reference, that it cannot be used in cars or households. Therefore, you need to know how to determine the year of manufacture of the battery Bosch or other manufacturer’s company.

Deciphering in a long code

The coding, which is widespread among companies that produce automobile batteries, contains 9 or 10 numbers. They are divided into 2 groups. The first group includes 4 numbers and the second group includes 5 or 6.

Let’s illustrate this with an example of 1222 345678, where:

  • 1 factory line
  • 222 own code, assigned to a particular party.
  • 3 last digit of the year of manufacture.
  • 4 1 or 2 half year.
  • 5 month in the half year. For the 1st half year the following numbers are adopted: 1 January, 2 February, 3 March, 4 April, 5 May, 6 June. For 2nd half year: 1 July6 December.
  • 6.7 date of manufacture. May contain 1 or 2 numbers.
  • 8 brigade, which made the battery. Its number can also be two-digit.

Based on the above instructions, it is quite easy to determine the year, month and date of manufacture of the battery. Let’s take the data as an example: 3354 823515. The interpretation of the designation is as follows: 3 flow line. 354 batch number, 2018., 2 half year, month 3 September, date 5. Brigade 15.

Thus the battery was produced on September 5, 2018.

Russian companies use a simpler six-digit code along with long codes. It is deciphered intuitively. For example: 052017. This means the battery was produced in May 2017. This marking does not contain information about the day of production.

How to know the date of manufacture of the battery and the marking of the battery

A battery is a product, the date of manufacture of which significantly affects its consumer characteristics. The freshness of the battery determines its performance and durability. Therefore, careful car owners when buying a battery assess not only the technical parameters. the density of the electrolyte and indicators when checking the voltmeter. but also the marking of the date of manufacture.

Manufacturers have adopted notional periods for storing batteries without recharging: up to three months for Antimony Batteries, up to six months for Hybrid Batteries, up to twelve months for Calcium Batteries. In any case the battery should be recharged before use.

These terms are not absolute, much depends on the correct storage conditions of the batteries.

There are no uniform standards for the marking of batteries by date of manufacture, it is placed differently on different batteries. Here are the options with deciphering of the most popular batteries.

We want to pay special attention to the fact that in the market there are unscrupulous sellers who overwrite the old date of manufacture of batteries (found on the battery Space in the year of. Ufa) and burn a fresher one on the case, or punch out on the pole lead (terminal). In this case, buying such a battery, you are buying a pig in a poke, it may be 3 years old and it has long zasulfated.

VARTA, Bosch, AFA, GIGAWATT (since 2014, new marking)

Attention! Since January 2014, the marking of the batteries Varta, Bosch, Afa, etc. changed to the following:

VARTA and Bosch began to use a new coding for the date of manufacture of the battery. In the long code these are the 4,5,6 digits. 4th digit year of issue, 5th and 6th digit month code: January.17 february.18 March-19 April-20 May-53 June-54 July-55 August-56 September-57 October-58 November-59 December-60

Before 01.01.2014 marking has a different code.

The marking code has been located on the top cover in the manufacturing code. The code consists of 24 characters, the fourth represents the year and the fifth through sixth the month.

G2C1050520991 536528 82E 09

On Bosch batteries, the date of manufacture is duplicated in the center of the front label, it contains three digits indicating the year and month of manufacture. For example, 105. May 2011.

In addition, the production date of a VARTA battery can be identified by a colored circle applied to the label or cover of the battery. The color of the mug corresponds to a specific quarter. At present, the production has abandoned the color designation, leaving only the marking code, but the battery produced before 2013, the color marking was applied:

The code on the battery case of many manufacturers includes the batch number, country, factory and city of production, assembly line number, date of manufacture from the day, month and year, etc. important information. It is applied primarily for internal use, so that you can easily distinguish the batch number and in case of defects quickly remove it from the tape. The code is also important for the store personnel, especially when they are approached with a complaint and need to conduct an independent examination of the technical condition of the device. The marking can also be of great service to the buyer, if he needs to know the date of manufacture and how long the device has been idle in the warehouse. It happens that the conditions of storage of the battery in the warehouse are extremely far from ideal, and the date of manufacture is the last thing they pay attention to. Getting the battery to the store was not without adventure either. In other words, before being in its rightful place under the hood, a battery can endure a lot of adversity, so the less time has passed since the date of manufacture, the better for the condition of the battery.

Different batteries have their own periods of storage without use, but the downtime from the date of manufacture for obsolete maintained antimony and low-antimony batteries is only six months. advanced maintenance free batteries with calcium added to the plates can be stored for up to a year without recharging. A calcium battery with silver-alloyed plates can last 12-18 months from the date of manufacture. But even during this time a lot of chemical processes will be going on inside the battery that will affect the condition and performance. This period is only a guideline and you’re better off getting a newer unit. Even the best AGM batteries can’t keep all their characteristics longer than two or three years and will run out forever.

To find out the date of manufacture of the battery, it is important to decipher the code of letters and numbers, which is drawn on the top section of the box with a laser, or can be found on a label or a special sticker. Each manufacturer has its own principle of encrypting the number, there is simply no single way, because even within the same company the code can vary.

Please note: if there is no manufacturing data on the battery at all or the date of manufacture is difficult to read beware of taking such a device. You are most likely dealing with a counterfeit which will not last long.

Eternal technology does not exist, any product has its own shelf life. Batteries also have their own rules of operation, because within it goes complicated chemical processes. Although modern batteries are designed for longer shelf life without recharging in the warehouse, still Buying a battery, pay attention to when it was manufactured.

According to the experts’ conclusion the storage time of the typical lead-acid batteries with antimony impurities does not exceed 10 months. For units with silver-plated plates, the storage terms are from one to one and a half years. The self-discharge of calcium batteries is kept to a minimum, the normal commissioning period is up to 2 years from the date of manufacture. And for batteries made with AGM technology, the commissioning period reaches three years.

For more details about how the date of manufacture affects the service life of the battery, we told in the article “What affects the date of manufacture of the battery”

In other words, do not buy a battery that is too stale. Remember, buying any car battery before putting it on the car, it is desirable to charge it. it will prolong its life.

Buying the battery in our company. you always get the battery with the allowable terms of commissioning, because when replenishing the stock we take into account the amount of sales of batteries and terms of their routine storage. Read our customer service reports.

So you came to the store. Where to look? How do you know the date of manufacture of a battery??

The date of manufacture is usually engraved on the battery case. There are no set standards for the marking of manufacturing terms.-

How to read the production date: Bosch Varta Batteries

The information is stamped differently on a variety of batteries. Manufacturers mark release terms with letters, numbers, or color coding. But how do you know how to decipher the code on the battery? There is nothing complicated here. Most manufacturers provide this information on their official websites.

We have prepared for you the deciphering of the production code of the most popular brands of storage batteries.

These decryptions are current at the time of writing (as of 2019), i.e.к. equipment at factories is periodically upgraded and production codes change, so on older models of batteries, as on batteries that will be released in the future, the codes may differ from those described in this article.

Deciphering by brand

For example, if we are talking about the German batteries Varta, they have an alphanumeric marking applied to the cover of the part. The exact year of manufacture is determined by the number of characters in the code. If the device was manufactured before 2014, the marking may look something like this:

  • The year is indicated by the last digit in the fourth position.
  • The month is in the 5th and 6th positions.
  • Day of manufacture is represented by a two-digit number in the 7th and 8th position of the marking.

We should take into account the fact that before 2013, the Varta brand used a colored display of the date of manufacture: the factory sticker indicated a circle with a specific color, indicating a particular quarter of the year.

Batteries from Bosch have a simplified form of marking, if you compare them with previous models from Varta. In this case, the year of manufacture is located in two places. on the front of the case and on the cover. The code is displayed as a three-digit marking, with the first digit indicating the month of manufacture and the next two indicating the year.

At the same time, since 2014, both brands decided to make changes to the numeric codes, unifying them. Now the algorithm for deciphering the date of manufacture has changed slightly. The basic data, as before, are in the factory marking. in the fourth, fifth and sixth blocks of the code. First, the year of manufacture and then the month. Given these numbers, you can get accurate information about when and where a particular battery was produced.

The models of the Turkish company Mutlu are also popular, and budget car owners consider them the most reliable and affordable devices, with an ideal combination of price and quality. The date of manufacture is provided along with the main marking, which consists of 6 separate digits. The first digit indicates the model, the second. the year of manufacture, the fourth. the month.

The last two digits indicate the day. As a result, when you buy a car battery labeled 350214, you can read that the unit went on sale February 14, 2015.

By the way, some leading manufacturers of batteries repeat the algorithm of the Turkish brand and use a similar marking.

Vesta products

Among the not bad batteries of Ukrainian production can be attributed a product Vesta, which is produced under two brands, but has the same form of marking, except for different fonts. Vesta” battery issue code is located on the front side, directly on the sticker, so it won’t be a problem to find it.

At the same time, models for passenger cars and light-duty vehicles have a digital marking of two separate blocks. The first indicates the team of workers engaged in the production of a particular model on a particular day, and the second. the date directly.

A concrete example of the date deciphering is as follows:

  • In the second block the first two digits indicate the exact year of manufacture of the battery.
  • The next two display the order number of the month.
  • The last two. the day of manufacture.

Given the fact that the brand does not change the form of the marking, regardless of brand or production plant, identifying the necessary information will always be simple and accessible.

Models for heavy and special equipment

It is no secret that the batteries for trucks, passenger vehicles and special equipment differ significantly from the models that are installed in passenger vehicles. First, they have an increased volume and are able to cope with huge loads. Secondly, the shape of the marking looks quite different from that of the battery for passenger cars.

As a rule, special automotive batteries have a factory sticker with an eight-digit code, where the fourth and fifth digits indicate the year and the seventh. the month. Everything else conveys different technical information, although you can not ignore the peculiarities of brands that can change the marking individually. In order not to make a wrong choice and to decipher important data correctly, it is necessary to know about the form of displaying the release date of specific brands.

Many companies from Europe, which are engaged in large-scale production of batteries for trucks and public transport, have been using a unified form of labeling for several years in a row. We are talking about brands FB, Forse, UNO, Vortex and many others. The products of these companies have a ten-digit code, where the 5th and 6th digits indicate the year of manufacture, the 8th is the month, and the 9th and 10th are the exact day.

As an exception we can take Japanese batteries, the marking of which differs significantly from the European ones. The fact is that most brands from the Land of the Rising Sun are used to mark the 5-digit alphanumeric code on the factory stickers. In this case, the first symbol is the day of manufacture, the second and third are the serial number of the week, and the fourth is the year. The last symbol is not numerical, but alphabetic. To find out the exact year of manufacture of a particular model, you need to find a special table on the manufacturer’s website or other verified sources.

Other manufacturers

If it is a question of buying products from an unknown brand, such as “Bear” from the manufacturer from Tyumen, before making a choice, you need to clarify the basic rules of reading the year of manufacture on the marking of batteries. It is not worth asking salesmen for help: it is unlikely they have such information, and if they do, they will hardly be ready to share it with the customer. There is also a risk of getting the data wrong, and the battery you buy may not be of good quality.

Today’s market of car batteries is so vast that it can be problematic to choose the perfect solution that will meet your vehicle’s requirements. In addition, each manufacturer is trying to distinguish itself from others by its own form of labeling, which only compounds the problem. Nevertheless, if you learn the main nuances of deciphering such a code, the forthcoming purchase will justify itself and be successful.

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The marking is applied to the battery case. The 1st digit is the year of production, the 2nd is the month, indicated by the letters of the Latin alphabet (A-January, B-February, C-March, etc.д.).

The marking has recently changed to a pair of two-digit numbers on the negative terminal of the battery. The first number is the number of the week and the second is the year. For example, 35/16 is week 35 of 2016.