Timeless silence
I think I have sorted out my car battery problem.
I have discovered that if I remove the battery from the car and leave it on a very long trickle charge it seems to last a hell of a lot longer.
I had to go down to the village earlier. First I had to replace the battery which is a simple enough job [apart from the leads being cut to a precise length so the location of the battery has to be very exact]. The car started perfectly and off I went.
I did my shopping and went to go home again. Not a fucking squeak out of the car. When I turned the key, the only sound was from the keys rattling in my hand. There was no click from the starter solenoid, nor a glimmer of life on the instruments. The car was as dead as a dodo. Fuck!
Being a resourceful chap, I hopped out and opened the bonnet [yeah – the “hood”, you fucking ignorant Mercans!]. There was the problem – the positive clamp had jumped off the terminal. I obviously hadn’t tightened the clamp enough. But now I had no spanner. So I put the clamp in position, removed my shoe [did I mention I was resourceful?] and gave it a wallop with the heel to push it tight[er].
Home I happily went [having remembered to put my shoe back on first].
I tightened the clamp when I got home so all should be well for the next trip.
The only problem is that removing the battery resets the clock and kills the radio.
The clock is no problem, and in fact it will save me the bother of resetting it twice a year.
The radio needs a security code to unlock it apparently. I must have that code somewhere, but frankly I couldn’t be bothered looking for it.
I never listen to the radio anyway.
Google your radio model and there may be a user guide explaining how to change the code from the factory default of 0000 (or whatever). Try that default code.
Happy New Year.
I have the code somewhere and could probably easily find it if I looked. If I am to do this battery removal lark on any sort of a regular basis though I would have to reset the radio [and clock] each time. As I rely on neither, it’s easier to just leave ’em.
“I have discovered that if I remove the battery from the car and leave it on a very long trickle charge it seems to last a hell of a lot longer”
Exactly what happens with a lead-acid battery which has been SLOWLY discharged. Remember that charging & discharging involves a chemical reaction which (eventually) permeates through the depth of the positive and negative plates. It’s impossible to quickly reverse this process – a short boost will appear to have done the trick, but all it does is change the outer layer of material, leaving the rest virtually unchanged. Essentially what you have is a battery with 10% of the active material fully charged, and 90% of it still discharged. Leave it for a few hours and that 10% migrates into the remaining “space”, and you now have a 10% charged battery which won’t provide sufficient current to start the engine. It’s that “very long” charge which fully penetrates the rest of the material and brings it back to full capacity.
“Removing the battery resets the clock and kills the radio”
Both the sort of low drain devices which can cause your problem. Admittedly, neither should draw more than a few milliamps, but unless you get handy with a multimeter you’ll never know if one of them is malfunctioning*. There’s a good chance that both are on the same fuse, so it might be prudent to remove it and see what happens.
* Many (at least 40) years ago a friend found her Ford Capri wouldn’t hold a charge – it turned out to be the radio, which the previous owner had wired up wrongly. They had connected the positive feed to the powered radio aerial lead, which is on the switched side of the circuit board. This meant the radio was permanently “live”, but with the volume knob turned fully off you wouldn’t hear anything. The only give-away was that the feeble dial light remained on, but this hadn’t been spotted by whoever did the installation…
I doubt the clock and radio account for much. The radio only complains as it has an anti theft device that disables it if removed so it flashes incessantly for the code to be entered.
If there is a drain on the static battery then I would be more inclined to look at the car’s anti theft system?  Incidentally – had some fun the last time I removed the battery. Once it was charging on the bench I thought it would be a good idea to charge the jump-starter as well. The latter was in the car but do you think I could get it out? I was able to get into the driver’s seat all right but wasn’t able to open the rear door at all. Had to manoeuvre the charger from the back to the front of the car which wasn’t easy.