How to Check the Date of a Motorcraft Battery

There are dozens of car battery brands available to consumers in the U.S., and Motorcraft is the brand installed in Ford vehicles when they are manufactured. Most battery buyers are unaware of the fact that nearly all auto batteries in the U.S. are made by just three manufacturers, Delphi, Exide, and Johnson Controls Industries, then labeled privately for other companies. Johnson Controls makes Motorcraft batteries, and they use a date code on their batteries that indicates when it was manufactured.

Locate the sticker or stamp on the battery that has a string of letters and numbers arranged in a battery date code. On a Motorcraft battery, this is located on the side of the battery case.

Identify the first character of the code. The first character will be a letter, and will be one of the letters "A" through "L." The letter "A" corresponds to the first month of the year, January, the letter "B" corresponds to the second month of the year, February, and so on. Thus a December month of manufacture would be indicated by the letter "L."

Look now to the second character in the code. It will be a number (0-9) that indicates the year the battery was made. The number corresponds to the last digit of the year. For example, a "9" would correspond to the year 2009, while a "6" would indicate the year 2006.

Ignore the remaining characters in the code, as they are not important in regards to checking the date of the battery. Put the two pieces of information together from Steps 2 and 3 to get the date of manufacture for the battery. For example, "C8" is the code for March of 2008.

Tips

if you’re having automotive troubles, check the serial number or manufacturing date and see how old the battery is. If you have a warranty from the battery manufacturer or dealership, you may be able to get a battery replacement or whole new battery. In cases of towing because of an old battery, a free replacement can be a big relief.