Hi Folks,

My recently acquired '98 has a non-OEM battery that won't hold a charge above about 9.5V. I have a good (but old) genuine Toyota one that I can swap in, but I am somewhat apprehensive about doing this, particularly because of the splats/sparks that usually occur. My concerns also are: Will it have any effect on the airbags/airbag warning lights? Will it set off the alarm? Will it forget the key pairing? (Will anything bad happen at all?) I certainly don't have the equipment to clear codes and stuff like that.

Thanks in advance,

Rich

 

You shouldn't have any problems installing a different battery so long as it fits in the tray and the terminal orientation is the same. 12 volts is 12 volts there's no difference in the battery besides maybe cold cranking amps which won't affect anything on your vehicle besides starting power in cold temperatures. Aside from that the only thing you should worry about is losing preset electronic settings (seat settings, temperature settings, radio settings). So what I would recommend you do is plug in a battery saver into your cigarette lighter which maintains all those settings when installing a new battery, or the other option is to keep a battery hooked up to the terminal clamps when you take them off your old battery.