Has anyone here had experience with this: Page not found? I have a friend who has a Honda Fit, less than two years old, that is on its third battery. The thing is she drives about 2000 km/year and almost never all winter and the battery keeps going dead.
By contrast, I have a 2 year old Fit that I drive not much over 3000 km/year but except for a three week span in February, I generally drive it at least once a week, although not far. Much of the 7000 km it has are from three round trips to NY, about 1000 km each from Montreal and I have had no problem. The only difference is that my car is garaged all winter.
I think I would just use a cigarette-lighter attached solar charger.
You should drive a car at least once every week or two and at least long enough for it to completely warm up (a good 20 minutes to half an hour). If you don’t do this you can have problems with seals drying out and your exhaust may pretty much rust apart and fall off. Water will also condense out of the air inside the engine, which isn’t a problem if you warn the car up and drive it (the water just gets flashed into steam and expelled), but if you don’t let the car warm up enough you end up with water in with your oil.
Most cars can go about a month without being charged and it won’t hurt the battery much. Any more than that and the normal battery drain from things like the clock and the radio’s memory circuits will kill the battery. If the battery is being damaged within a month it might indicate a problem with the car, like something is not shutting off when it should and is draining the battery while it is sitting. It sounds to me like the battery is just getting drained too much from just sitting.
Another thing I’ve heard conflicting information about is if you leave a lead acid battery sitting motionless long enough, the electrolyte can stratify. The tiny circulating electrical currents that result from this will sulfate the battery plates and ruin the battery. This is a problem in really large lead acid batteries, and those types of batteries often have stirring systems (stirring rods or maybe they’ll just blow air through the electrolyte to stir it up). A car battery is small enough that there’s a lot of debate about whether you get any significant effect on the battery from this or not, and I’ve got better things to do than stick a battery out in my garage for six months to see what happens. Regardless of whether it really is a problem or not, just driving the car once every week or two will stir up the electrolyte (just from the motion of the car) and will eliminate any chance of a problem.
I have no experience at all with the battery brain you linked to, but it seems excessively complicated to me. You can buy a cheap trickle charger and just plug the car in once a week for a few hours and you won’t have a problem with your battery. Those solar chargers that beowulff mentioned work too.
A little off topic, but as the question seems to be answered pretty well already -
I’m very curious as to why someone who drives so little would even bother to have a car? I personally rent one maybe once a month or so, and have a friend with a ZipCar account. We save so much money this way I don’t get why someone would bother with so much added expense?
I’m not meaning to be rude in any way, I’m really curious.