Okay, so after one of those months where seemingly everything went wrong with my old '76 240D I ended up with a dead battery.

I've had the same Interstate battery in the car that was in there when I bought it 6 years ago, so no surprise that it finally died, but the timing!!

So I did a ton of research and decided that the best deal I could get locally was on a Duralast from Autozone, which were at least at some point made by Johnson Control Group and quite a deal at $89.

I picked one up and what do you know, it says Heche in Mexico on it and I also can't see anywhere that it says made by Johnson.

Did I just buy a crappy battery for my rig? Oh well, at least I get warranty!

mark in Portland

Duralast is no longer made by Johnson Controls. I remember seening a blurb in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal a couple years ago.

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1959 Gravely LI, 1963 Gravely L8, 1973 Gravely C12
1982 380SL
1978 450 SEL 6.9 euro restoration at 63% and climbing
1987 300 D
2005 CDI European Delivery
2006 CDI Handed down to daughter
2007 GL CDI. Wifes

I've receintly had battery problems myself. After shopping around, I found that the high-end walmart battery (Everstart maxx) is made by jc and is only $75. This is in the group 49 size, anyway. Not sure if w123's use the same battery as the w126 diesels.

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Mike
1983 Mercedes-Benz 300SD 270K
1960 Ford F250 62K
1990 Mazda Miata 156k

The thing is Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.

Apparently, no one told Johnson Controls!!!

http://www.autobatteries.com/about/index.asp

I just bought a group 49 Autozone "Professional" battery, thought I'd give it a try.

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Gone to the dark side

- Jeff