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captainsblogWe've had a rather large yellow doorstop in our driveway for the past month or so. Eleanor's truck, which there's not much call for in the wintertime, had been garaged until Easter. That's when we decided to roll it out, and I do mean roll, since I'd been bad about taking it for weekly spins during the dead of winter and the battery done died.
Not even the Day of Resurrection could raise that battery from the dead, at least through normal jumping procedures. The same had been true with our oldest car, ostensibly Emily's, when I left it to sit too long over the previous winter, and it needed a brand new battery to get going, so I just figured this one had a visit from the Traveling AAA Battery Man in its near future.
Eleanor, however, has a coworker with far more car smarts than me, and he loaned her an AC-powered charger to attempt the restart. According to the instructions, the setup was the same on the chargee end as is recommended for a battery-to-battery jump: red claw to the positive terminal, black claw ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY NOT TO THE NEGATIVE TERMINAL NO DON'T YOU'LL BLOW YER FOOL SELF UP.
So I selected a sufficiently grounded spot on the engine block, plugged the sucker into the wall, and,.... nothing.
By bedtime, the charge-level needle hadn't moved a micron. Eleanor had a morning meeting with the coworker, and he said that wasn't unusual, and to leave it on good and long.
Four "good and long" hours later, still nada. So she defied the laws of physics and connected the black clip directly to the negative terminal-- and got an instant reading on the gauge, and, a couple of hours later, a completely recharged battery. Worst of all, Mythbusters fans, nothing blowed up real good.
You mechanically inclined types will need to let me know just how lucky we were here. Meanwhile, I'll be in the kitchen, zapping a bunch of foil-wrapped Peeps and performing other Unwise Microwave Oven Experiments.
Not even the Day of Resurrection could raise that battery from the dead, at least through normal jumping procedures. The same had been true with our oldest car, ostensibly Emily's, when I left it to sit too long over the previous winter, and it needed a brand new battery to get going, so I just figured this one had a visit from the Traveling AAA Battery Man in its near future.
Eleanor, however, has a coworker with far more car smarts than me, and he loaned her an AC-powered charger to attempt the restart. According to the instructions, the setup was the same on the chargee end as is recommended for a battery-to-battery jump: red claw to the positive terminal, black claw ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY NOT TO THE NEGATIVE TERMINAL NO DON'T YOU'LL BLOW YER FOOL SELF UP.
So I selected a sufficiently grounded spot on the engine block, plugged the sucker into the wall, and,.... nothing.
By bedtime, the charge-level needle hadn't moved a micron. Eleanor had a morning meeting with the coworker, and he said that wasn't unusual, and to leave it on good and long.
Four "good and long" hours later, still nada. So she defied the laws of physics and connected the black clip directly to the negative terminal-- and got an instant reading on the gauge, and, a couple of hours later, a completely recharged battery. Worst of all, Mythbusters fans, nothing blowed up real good.
You mechanically inclined types will need to let me know just how lucky we were here. Meanwhile, I'll be in the kitchen, zapping a bunch of foil-wrapped Peeps and performing other Unwise Microwave Oven Experiments.