Car Battery Tip
I'm not a member of this group, but I wanted to post this in an appropriate place. This is a tip from my brother, who is a very learned engineer type of person. He knows how to fix stuff. However, this was news to even him and it concerns a very simple thing we can all do to possibly prevent a re-wiring disaster with a car battery. If you're in a hurry, just scroll to the boldfaced section.
I will cut and paste his email to me:
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Steve stopped over last night to haul the F250 out to the mechanic's shop. Because of the length of the pickup, we would have to get it out into the street to load it with the front first.
While he was parked next to it he wanted to jump it with an auxiliary battery mounted on the near side of his truck. That worked and I drove it around the block before returning to the house. Bad battery, Steve declares. So I shut it off and tried it again. This time you can hear a noise come from the engine compartment. Of which Steve says is my starter hanging up with the motor flywheel.
Now here is where it gets interesting. He goes on to tell me that can lead to your vehicle catching fire, burning all the wiring in the motor compartment. He has seen it many times. The solution is to quickly disconnect the battery. I always try to keep the correct wrench in all my vehicles' toolboxes, but not particularly for that purpose as I never considered it for catching the vehicle on fire.
He went on to explain that he first suspected a bad battery because he had calls on so many of them during the cold snap. And I hadn't told him that I inadvertently left the switch on after the cold snap, lowering the battery charge.
So, while the pickup is running and not wanting to risk another starter hang up I headed out with Steve trailing me for the ride back home.
Lesson to be learned? Carry the correct size wrench for quickly disconnecting the battery.
++wow, can you imagine the cost on re-wiring the motor compartment?
Electric work is always expensive because the wiring is so tiny and it's tricky, too. Last year I tried to replace a mere taillight battery and ended up paying an extra $120 for messing up and breaking some of the wiring.
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