Hi,

I have a 98 Accord EX.

I replaced the battery 20 months ago with a 72 month battery. Last
week I could not start the car without a jump. I put my charger on the
battery and it would appear to charge up to 100% fairly quickly. If I
tried to start the car I'd get one good kick which seemed almost good
enough to start the the car and then it would rapidly just turn to
clicking (starter?). As mentioned, car would start instantly with a
jump. One thing I thought that was odd was that if I tried to start
the car with my headlights on, they would dim somewhat but wouldn't die
out completely which was leading me to believe the battery was not
completely at fault.

I took the car to the shop and they said the battery was dead. They
put a new battery in, checked the charging system and said that it was
fine. Car has run fine since, but I still have this nagging feeling
that something may not be quite right. Why would the battery go so
soon if there are no apparent issues with the charging system? Why was
my charger claiming to fully charge the battery? What about the test
with the headlights? Are there reasonable explanations for this? Is
there any other tests I can do at home (I've got a digital multimeter
if that'd do me any good)
to verify operations of things?

Thanks for any thoughts.