CCA to AH Conversion – How to Convert it (Step by Step Guide)

If you are planning to purchase a new battery for your car, you are definitely going to be needing a whole lot of research before you bump into a good choice.

However, when it comes to the specifications of a battery, things don’t stay simple anymore, and there is a lot that just flies over your head, leaving you clueless.

One such issue is converting CCA to AH, which many people struggle with. Truth be told, it’s not a very straightforward calculation since there is no set formula for that. But you don’t need to worry as I will be guiding all you all about it.

By the end of this article, you will have a firm idea of how to convert the CCA to AH and some other tips about the batteries of your car.

So, let’s start without any further ado.

What does CCA mean?

CCA, which stands for Cold Cranking Amps, refers to the ability of the battery surge capacity for a short span of time, which essentially refers to how much the battery is capable of providing the juice efficiently when the engine is starting up.

So, as you know, start-ups are not an issue in hot regions, but in case you live in a cold one, the engine will demand more surge capacity from the battery for start-up in cold weather, which is what the CCA stands for.

A higher CCA rating of a battery lets you know that the battery is great for start-ups even in cold weather, but you don’t need to care about it a lot if you don’t live in cold weather, precisely below zero degrees.

The good thing about the CCA rating is that even though the battery capacity reduces sharply over time, the CCA rating doesn’t go down as fast, and even after several years of using the same battery, it will be a lot less bad than the AH deterioration.

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What does AH mean?

So, what does AH mean? And why do people care about it that they want to convert the CCA into this?

Well, AH, which stands for Ampere Hours. Now, as you might already know, the ampere is the measurement of actual current flow through the battery, which is calculated by the electrons flowing from one end to another.

A single ampere refers to a single coulomb of charge, if it goes through the conducting rods in a single second, as these charges increase, the rating of AH also increases.

So, if you want to put it in a very simple way, AH refers to the actual capacity of the batter, how much current is the battery capable of providing to your car. It’s obvious now why someone would want to know to thing rating before buying a new battery.

However, you should also keep in mind that this rating reduces sharply with time, and older the battery gets, the more its AH diminishes, a lot more quickly than CCA does.

This often why some people give a lot more attention to CCA instead of the AH rating when buying an old battery.

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Why Do you need to convert CCA to AH?

First things first, why in the first place would anyone need to covert the CCA into AH, why get into something which is not easy to achieve? Let’s see.

First off, both these things are used to point out two different things, and they are different to the extent that they don’t even follow the rule of thumb.

However, they do have some sort of relationship, where you can be sure that if the CCA of a battery increases, the AH will also do.

The reason why people have CCA readings is that if you live somewhere cold, CCA is very useful, and it helps a lot while determining the performance of the battery in low-temperature conditions.

More the reading, better the battery will perform, that’s for sure.

However, when you want to find the actual capacity of the battery to check if it will be good for your vehicle, you would need to find the AH of the battery.

So, you see, while CCA undoubtedly helps a lot to know how the battery will perform in the cold weather, and how much issues it will face during start-up, it is equally important to convert it into AH as well since nobody wants to buy a battery without knowing its capacity first.

Now, let’s see what AH and CCA really mean, so when you jump onto the conversion calculation, you completely know what’s going around.

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How to Convert CCA to AH

As I have already mentioned before, there is no direct correlation between the CCA rating of a battery and its AH battery, so what do you do?

However, you don’t need to worry and get hopeless as throughout the years; people have estimated a very good measure, which often results in a very close to the accurate reading o the AH, if not the exact.

So, whenever you buy a battery that has a CCA rating, you just need to use this simple division formula and convert it into AH to get an idea of what capacity the battery you are buying.

So, the rule of thumb, in this case, is to divide the CCA rating with a constant value of 7.25, and you will get the AH value, easy, right? Well, again, I cannot guarantee that the AH value you will get by this method is the exact value that the battery carries, but trust me, this is as close as you could get.

As an example, imagine you are considering buying a battery with a CCA rating of around 1500, and you want to figure out the AH rating as well. Now, you simply divide 1500 with 7.25, so 1500 / 7.25 = 206.9.

So, 207AH is the approximate value that you can use to estimate the battery health of your battery.

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How to know if the Car Battery is Bad?

You might be wondering what some other factors are to see if the battery is performing over par since the AH doesn’t provide us with an exact value.

Moreover, you need to absolutely make sure that the battery is worth replacing before you take it out since batteries don’t come in so cheap.

The first one is quite simple and intuitive as well; you just need to make sure that the battery terminals which are connecting the battery are tightly secured and not weak.

Because if they’re weak, the battery will not perform up to its potential, leading you to think that the battery is bad, when in fact, it’s not.

Secondly, check to see if the battery terminal is worn out; if they are, it is not necessary for you to completely change the battery, and only the terminals can be replaced, which will make the battery working again like a charm.

Lastly, in this test, you have to jump start the engine and leave it like that for a few minutes. After some time has passed, turn off the engine for a while and try to switch it on again using the ignition.

If the battery fails to start the engine here, it is probably bad, and there is no other way but to replace the battery.
Make sure you follow these steps before you come to your verdict about changing a battery as you might be wasting a battery, which is completely functional.

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How to Take Care of your Battery

Here I will be listing down some points, and you could follow these if you want to take proper care of your batteries and want them to last longer.

• Regularly add the electrolyte to the battery when needed. Having low electrolyte levels for a long period of time   could do significant damage to the lifespan as well as the performance of your battery.

• If you ever want to store the battery safely and you plan to discharge it for this purpose, make sure you don’t   discharge the battery below a certain point, otherwise, it will wear the battery out quickly.

This minimum level of the battery is different for each, and you should check with the manual if you don’t know about yours.

• When you are charging your battery, always make sure that the electrolyte doesn’t reach the boiling point since it   could cause a lot of damage to the life of the battery.

Moreover, you should not try to charge your battery if it’s very cold or the electrolyte is frozen. Wait before it comes to operating temperature.

Final Thoughts

Buying a new battery for your vehicle is not a very straight forward task and takes a considerable amount of research before you buy it.

Knowing the AH rating of a battery is a very good measure of estimating the life of the battery and the power it is capable of delivering.

However, it’s not that easy as most manufacturers only provide CCA, and converting it to AH doesn’t have a proper way, so the most you can do it get an estimate.