The car failed to start this morning. Battery flat. I think there is a fault with the diesel transmission heater which is flattening the battery over night.
I managed to blag a jump start, but this showed me that it is not wise to rely on the battery however reliable it has been in the past. So I'm considering one of those jump start packs. It has to be fairly meaty to turn over a 3 litre diesel.
Any recommendations?
TIA
Dave R
One of my neighbours has a yard full of old cars and tractors, he uses one of the supercapacitor starters, you don't have to remember to keep it charged from e.g. mains, it charges itself from residual energy in the vehicle's own battery and tells you when it's ready to supply it all back to start it ... of course there does need to be /some/ juice left in the battery ...
I have a NOCO GB70 which I bought three years ago at a huge discount in a flash offer. I would not have paid anything like full price for it. It has started a diesel panel van (unknown engine size) and a Ferrari FF (6.3l V12). No, its not mine. I have also used it as an emergency 12V power supply. The output on the proprietary connector is quite tightly regulated, whereas the giant croc clips go straight to the lithium batteries via a relay. It is still in good condition, having been stored with about 3/4 charge for most of the time. John
Fault located (I hope) and fixed. Fuse pulled for the heater which stopped it running and now all looks to be fine. Disconnecting the battery is not straightforward as you have to remove the powered seat to get to it!
Battery checked by the garage and pronounced OK but only half charged (which is not surprising as it was flat as a pancake before I got a jump start from a neighbour).
Cheers
Dave R
Thanks. Cheapest I can find with a quick search is £170 on Amazon with a general list price of £200. At that level of pricing you are paying for portability because a 12V car battery can be had for a lot less and used at home.
Then again, I think it was lucky that the car failed at home and not whilst we were away.
Cheers
Dave R
A few years ago my car battery failed suddenly. It'd started the car (a diesel) easily and driven 5 miles or so, was switched off and on trying to restart 15 minutes later, it was completely dead, not even attempting to turn the engine over. It chose to die, at the top of a slipway, at the end of an unpopulated country road, on the West coast of Ireland, at about 7pm on New years eve!
A very nice mechanic came out (when he could find us), gave us a jump start and followed us back to the house we were renting. When switching off, it was again dead. He took the battery away and returned on New Year's Day morning and started fitting a replacement before we'd even got out of bed.
FWIW I have just bought one of these for my Renault Master
But I have not tried it yet. It's the Draper supercapacitor model which claims to do 3 litre diesels.
It turns out to have a lithium ion battery in it too, which needs charging first. The manual is fairly dreadful (but it does include instructions on how to use it on the case).
I have a couple of smaller LiIon packs too, these work fine on my petrol cars (1 and 1.3 litre) but do not have the oomph for the big van.
Thanks.
My requirements seem to match the maximum capacity, but at that price I would probably buy the higher capacity one mentioned elsewhere in this thread for the extra £50.
One thing that I note is the very thin battery leads on these devices. Jump leads are much thicker. I assume that the idea here is that the device imparts at least a surface charge to the dead(ish) battery and doesn't crank the engine directly.
Cheers
Dave R
I worried about that from the pictures. In fact they are not all that thin (although they are aluminium) and as Rod says they are quite short. It also has pretty good clamps, which are sometimes the achilles heel of cheaper jump leads.
And no, it does crank the engine directly.
I'm keeping mine in its (slightly bulky) cardboard box. In an ideal world they would come with a compact but durable case that makes sure it's not possible to short the clamps together accidentally, as might happen if you carried it in a tool bag with spanners and screwdrivers. The leads don't un-plug, unlike most LiIon ones that I have seen.
I admit I didn't look at the Audew, I decided I would try a supercapacitor one because you are not dependent on checking it every few months.
But that does look to be an impressive beast. I have a slightly smaller model, but that won't cope with a modern 2.3 litre diesel.
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