OT Dead Car Battery Adventure

I once made one with a 9v battery and a cig lighter plug. I hear 9v is enough, but I don't know where it is.

Quite a saga. Congratulations.

I hate when they refer to dirty movies as adult content. Why don't they just call them dirty movies like they are supposed to?

I've heard that they've cleaned up the industry in recent years.

True story, happened this week. My wife called me, said can you drive me to work, my car won't start. I think we need a new battery.

Sure, no problem. But didn't we just buy a new battery? No, that was the other car. Okay. I have a few age related memory problems.

So dropped her off to work, tried the car. Hmm, turned over fine, but didn't start. Got the gas can from the garage. I try to empty all the gas cans and the lawnmower at the end of the season, but I miscalculated and had one gallon left. Put that in, car started right up, ran fine.

!!!! You're lucky she made it home the previous night.

They simply lowered the standards of what was acceptable. George Carlin's "7 words" are down to 3 now.

My truck ran out of gas in the driveway not long ago. I did have about a gallon in the mower can. I wasn't baffled tho.

Her cig lighter jack only has power to it when the ignition is on.

I wonder if it will work with a memory saver like yours that plugs in there rather than the OBD socket?

That really sucks. It means you can't leave your phone or similar in the car to charge for a couple of hours while you're not driving. Friend of mine that I met for lunch recently had that happen. His phone was dead, his Honda shuts of the lighter. We put it in my BMW while we had lunch.

Not if it shuts off.

I've heard every one of those "7 words" on broadcast TV at some time, including when Monty Python said that American beer was like making love in a canoe.

I hated when they started to doing that.

My first car didn't even require the key to crank the engine ('50 Olds)

Only by leaving the ignition on and I definitely wouldn't want to be dis- and connecting the battery when the ignition is on.

Earlier this year I put an always-on socket next to the one that has to have the ignition on. Havent' needed it yet, but once visiting my brother I had to charge the phone in his car when we werent' there.

I also have a battery powered plane I'm trying to learn how to fly, and iirc it only flies for 5 or 6 minutes on a charge. So mayyybe I could buy a spare and rechage in what, an hour** while I talk to the other guys with planes. **Probably not.

In most cars I have messed with in the last decade or two it was easy to move the lighter socket or just about anything from hot to fused ignition or the other way. Look at the fuse block. If there is an empty slot next to the lighter, I bet it is the "other way". Just move the fuse holder or spade connector over.

I decided to do a preemptive replacement on the nearly six year old battery in my car- only this time, I first scored an alligator clamp OBD2 memory saver device on Ebay for $5.

The clamps need to be hooked to another 12 volt battery for a power source and I was just going to use a set of jumper cables to hook to my wife's car.

Then I remembered most UPS power supplies have removable sealed compact

Only real problem I had was locating the OBD2 connector in my car. It wasn't under dash near the driver's door as most of them are- or at least used to be. At my age, it's pretty hard to get down that low much less crawl around in a tight space- and a flashlight and mirror weren't much help.

YouTube, however, was my friend and I finally found it under dash- though well to the right of the steering column and almost to the gas pedal. Once I found the connector, it was less than 10 minutes to complete the job.

Win number two :-)

Many years ago, I replaced the battery on my '53 Chevy 3100 and reversed the polarity.

No problem. Generator simply repolarized...radio worked fine as it used a vibrator supply. The only problem was that the gauges read backwards.

LOL That way you'll never run out of gas.

Newer cars, and that is the last 40 years, disconnecting the battery can lead to problems. At best you lose radio presets and clock time but worst is fits it causes to computer. I was reticent to even give a guy a jump start a while back.

One of my coworkers asked for a jump a couple years back, her car was one of those PT Cruiser lookalikes.

I connected it up positive to positive, negative to negative, at least I thought so. She took a look and said no that's wrong, this one is red, and she switched them. I was pretty sure I was right but I hadn't had the cataract surgery yet and my vision wasn't the greatest.

There was a bit of a clunk, like a relay clicking, and her computer fried totally and needed complete replacement.

You were lucky!!!