Complaint Review: AC Delco

My wife complained that she had a starting problem with our 2002 Saturn LW300 V6. I opened the hood and found the battery's positive terminal and sheetmetal below it with signs of corrosion.

I thought I'd caught it early and all was well but when I removed the positive terminal, battery fuild came out and I could see the terminal screw tip had been corroded. Now I had a dripping battery to handle. Looks like a basic design issue of, "screw too long and hole too short".

Then I noticed the (group) 78 6yr label. AC Delco's warranty is void once the battery goes into a new car. GM gives 36k only. But GM likes to keep the label as-is, which I think is very misleading. Are AC Delco's non-OEM batteries the same??

After replacing the battery with a new DieHard Gold, the car would not start and was locked into Park by the Anti-Thief module (BCM). I tried to reset it by the owner manual instructions but nothing worked.

Had the car towed (AAA) to the Saturn dealer who estimated $125 to re-program it, then later said it needed a new BCM module at $600. At pickup time it was $700 (with discount of course). The Saturn mechanic wrote that my battery terminal cable was "loose", suggesting that was the cause. Did I mention that GM owns AC Delco.

One has to wonder how much money a designed-in flaw can generate verses warranty pay-outs. Batteries are always pro-rated and a module can be designed to fail when diconnected without doing the service "trick". As an engineer I think both these products have design issues. Maybe that's the way GM wants it(?).

David
San Jose, California
U.S.A.