I've been considering getting one of those powerpacks, used for jumpstarting cars etc. The cold weather and a reluctant to start car this morning have reminded me about this.
As well as starting the potentially starting the car(s) currently a 2.0L petrol Mondeo and a diesel Yaris, I plan to take it camping with us, for use charging various electronic things up when not on hookup. So a 12V socket would be necessary as well, a 3 pin socket would also be handy (though I have a separate inverter, but that 'another thing' to carry around)
Not really bothered about tyre inflaters, lights etc.
Sounds like what you really want is simply another 12V battery.
I have one of Maplins "finest" . The thing about that particular attempt is that unless you keep it on float charge pretty much all the time it self-discharges and is flat when you need it most. If you get yourself one of eBays 3-way cigarette adapter with 5V USB charger accessories, that will power your stuff. As this is a DIY group, you'll be able to work out how to connect it yourself ;-). A nice feature of ciggy adapter+USB thingy I got was that the USB charger was run from a small PCB containing an MC34063 switching reg. With a little modification, this now powers a hi-brightness LED instead, that runs for over 2 weeks non-stop from a 7Ah SLA battery, though this probably wouldn't have enough energy to recharge a flat car battery to the point where the car would start.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember pete saying something like:
Ditto. Mine gave sterling service for a couple of years and then died when I left it too long between charges. To the OP, for hard starting in this winter, stick a 60W tubular heater under the bonnet, and under the battery especially, if there's room.
Some of us don't have off-street parking let alone garages :( If one lives in a terraced house and has to park on the street - and doing so within 25m is a good day - a cheap jumpstart is perhaps a bit more practicable for a winter boost (so long as, in my limited experience, the main battery is not totally knackered).
Quite, lead acid batteries don't like the cold. I should imagine there is a spike in the sales of car batteries when the first really cold period of winter arrives.
If a battery is older than about 5 years and is starting to not have enough umph to turn the engine at a decent speed on a cold morning but does on a warmer one be prepared for it to die or not be any use the next cold morning. Keeping it warm with a heater or simply having it on trickle charge will only postpone the inevitable.
Because of the large load on such a small battery, it won't act as a jump start pack for long. Perhaps a dozen or less times before the battery will no longer deliver enough current. So saying mine is still ok as a portable power source after many years - and still holds a charge well. Not bad for
I use a cheapo one for camping in France - never used one for starting a car though. It's used for powering portable dvd player, charging phones, recharging batteries for torches, recharging mp3 players etc
What is it about batterys that make some people so stingy in replacing them, they are not really that expensive for such a vital component you depend on. I had a neighbour who refused to speak to us for months after I refused to give him yet another jumpstart . Tight git kept getting one "from a mate who knows someone in a scrapyard" Get him out of bed at 5am were roughly my final words to him.
The battery doesn't even have to be that old. A couple of years ago I replaced my c/b for the reasons you describe. Last winter when we had snowmageddon I left the car on the drive for a couple of weeks, as the steepness of our cul-de-sac and utter lack of council interest meant it was not possible for anything to drive out (or in). During that time I doubt the temperature ever rose above 0°C. That effectively killed the
I do agree that an awful lot of drivers seem to be guilty of "optimism bias". But perhaps one man's "stingy" is sometimes another's "I have the time to save the money". For example one £35 "jumpstart" from CPC, charged monthly, plus just a dozen or so shivery mornings, got 2 cars with old batteries through 2 winters before the cars were replaced. That saved us £150 or so on 2 new batteries. It also gave us additional functionalities of the kind the OP wanted (including the use of compressor). I wouldn't have done it when we drove both cars to work most days. But we now only make occasional use of the cars; and the value of my time for the purposes of investment appraisal is much depressed.
Haven't motor manufacturers gone over to something called lead chloride ones these days. I could be wrong in the description here.
We have 2 Rover 45's, pause for laughter to stop and then my wife went away for about 2 to 3 weeks and when I went to give the car she drives a run, the battery was almost at the point of a chattering starter solenoid. I put it on charge overnight and it was no better the next day. Went to see my Rover mechanic, in the other one and he explained that the battery will die and not take a charge if it is ignored for much over ten days.
He lent me another battery and I swapped them and took the car back to have a new one fitted.
I've got a second battery, retrieved from the old car when it was scrapped. But if I want to take it camping then I've got to faff about with various leads and bits and bobs.
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Robin" saying something like:
Exactly so. In my case, the alternator is fecked and it's bloody difficult to find parts or a replacement, so in the meantime I'm restricted to local-ish runs and the cold starts hammer the capacity of the battery, seeing as the glow-plug relay keeps on for about 1min after starting. The battery is actually in very good condition, but it was incredibly slashed in capacity after a night at -8 or so.
It's possible the battery is getting flakey, but IIRC this is only it's second winter, so it should be ok, though if the problem continues, I'll be looking to get a new one under warranty. But like I said it spent a few days sat outside Okehampton youth hostel last week in the cold and started happily. It was fine this morning, though don't think it had been as cold last night, so might have been the first signs of it giving up the ghost.
I'm not intending to make jump starting a regular habit :-) But there has been an occasion a few years ago where I'd flattened the battery enough by an internal light getting left on or something. It's wouldn't have been a great problem, except that it was parked on the drive blocking my wife getting her car out to go to work. And somehow we contrived to flatten the car battery enough whilst camping last year whilst packing up, so it wouldn't start. Again not a major problem there is always the breadown service, as it happens someone got us going with one of these powerpacks.
It's more likley to get use as this I reckon.
I was just wondering if anyone had any experience, recommendations (or not)
In message , snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.co.uk writes
Stingyness for some, inertia for other I guess.
Typically, you'll have a problem with it not. starting, then it'll be ok for a while, so you'll not bother (or decide to wait for a bit) getting it sorted, and then a few weeks later it happenns again, you put it off again, and then its the spring and things are ok, and then next winter comes......
Don't necessarily expect a dealer to make that a simple process, when my battery started becoming weak last year after 2 years, they wanted the car in for observation for 48 hours, assuming it would be some device taking background current all the time, OK that might have been the problem (but it wasn't) - the time/hassle made it simpler to just buy a new one.
My last 3 cars I had from new, and kept to an average of about
10 years old. None ever needed new batteries.* The original manufacturer batteries IME seem to be excellent, but replacements often aren't as they're sold on price.
Also reminds me of a new exhaust I had fitted at qwik-fit many years ago. As I paid, the guy handed me the recipt and guarantee, and said "Here's your 2 year guarantee. Don't lose it, because the exhaust will only last 18 months." And he was right.
*One exception was one car where the battery was cracked from the beginning, replaced on day 2 with, I suspect, a dead one from around the back of the garage, and then replaced by me on day 3 with an expensive original Ford one bought from another garage and claimed back from the first garage, which then lasted for over 10 years - still working fine when I sold the car.
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