That $10k deductible is highly dubious. Hopefully it’s on your credit card so you can dispute it. Some buddies did a Baja tour on rented bikes, and when they got done the operator dinged them for every single scratch (they’re DIRT bikes). They ended up owing thousands on Suzuki DR-Zs in the oughts. I would definitely ask for an itemized list at an absolute minimum. $10k buys a nice Miata autocrosser!
8 years old? You need a new battery.
From what I’ve been reading, there are tools that can keep the radio and such from reseting while the battery is out of the car. I wonder if it’s worth getting one of those, or if the battery is so dead that the radio has already reset itself.
Just have a pro do it. Note that out here in CA, AAA does it for the cost of the battery or so.
I got a quote from a local mobile mechanic and it was $428. I may call someone to do it, but I’d like to save a few bucks, if I can.
NAPA usually delivers, as do dealers. You could probably get Uber Eats to pick one up at Wally World…
Yeah, but he wants the battery installed in such a way that the radio and such do not re-set.
Sure, but a) how much is it worth to re-set your presets? and b) most head units have a small battery that preserves your info. It’s common practice to pull the ground when doing any electrical work (or welding) and it’s really rare to get a full reset.
Well, like I said, AAA does it for the cost of the battery.
It’s not just the station presets. Don’t some car radios disable themselves as an anti-theft measure if they lose power?
There might be other things two. like pairing the car with my two key fobs.
I’m starting to think it would just be easier to call in the pros from Dover.
What kind of car is it? If there is an enthusiast forum for that make/model, you’ll probably find out there if anything needs resetting after a battery removal.
Nothing like that since the 90s. Factory radios don’t get stolen anymore.
Any time I’ve changed a battery on a car built in the last 15 years there’s been no hiccups. Figure since thumb drives became cheap and ubiquitous, everything is written to stable media.
The saga continues. I tried checking for mobile mechanics on the web. They’d give me a quote to install a new battery, but when I tried to schedule it they said there were no mechanics in my area. So I went out today and got a low-current battery charger/maintainer. I connected it, but none of the lights are on, so I suspect that the battery is too dead for that charger to do anything. Another day wasted.
I swear it’s impossible to find a simple answer for anything. Some places say a battery swap is simple, some say that I need a battery tender lest everything cease functiong once the battery is out. A Honda forum says they have a specific tool that plugs in to the OBD port and saves the settings, so I don’t have to run the idle relearn procedure once the new battery is in. This is almost enough to turn me into a lifelong pedestrian.
Current plan is to leave the charger on for a couple hours and see what happens. If that doesn’t do anything, I’ll see if I can get a jump start tomorrow and try to get enough life in the battery for the charger to work.
good plan
Cars are very close to the point where if it’s under the hood the only tool you or I can use to work inside there is a credit card. There is distressingly close to zero that can be maintained by an ordinary driver without consequential damage and heartache.
Just checked on the car. It’s really most sincerely dead.
I may have to hop over to the stupidest-product-design thread. I have an outdoor extention cord with a label on it warning to never, ever, ever exceed the current rating for the cord, and doesn’t say what the rating is. The instructions for the charger say to connect one clamp to the positive battery terminal, and the other to the engine block or frame. The way it’s wired makes that impossible. There’s barely enough cable between the two clamps to reach from one battery terminal to the other.
Good one. The tune popped into my head as I read that.
The current rating is determined by the gauge of the wire used in the extension cord, the wire gauge will be imprinted on the insulation on cord. It will be a number and probably followed by AWG, probably 12AWG, 14AWG, or 16AWG (20, 15, and 10 amps respectively). 14 or 12 will probably be sufficient for a battery charger. 12 if it’s a long cord, say over 25 feet.
As for the clamps, most chargers I have seen have lamp cord type wire, you can just pull them apart to increase the length of the individual conductors so you can span a wider distance.
BTW, if the battery has zero voltage (I don’t know if you have a multimeter to check), then there’s probably no point in trying to avoid having to reset anything. That bridge has been crossed if you have zero volts.
I thought of that. I don’t know if it’s completely and utterly 0 volts. I’ll get the jump start and see where things stand.
It’s alive! It’s alive!
(Who knew car trouble could inspire so many 1930s movie quotes?)
It’s alive, but it didn’t look like it would be. I called a towing company about half-a-mile away. They wanted $100 to come for a jump start. That struck me as a little steep, so I tried my landlord next door. Had to wait 'til he got home, but we hooked up the jumper cables. Nothing happened. About five minutes later, we were adjusting the cable and suddenly my car’s alarm started going off. We disconnected the cables, and it was dead again. Cleaned the terminals and connected the cables again. We were hooking up his fault detector to the OBD port when the alarm went off again. I shut off the alarm but left the cables in place. A few minutes later, the dashboard lights came on.
It’s weird. I would expect all the electrics to not work, or work a little bit, or work great. This is different; it’s like as the battery charges various systems come to life at different times.
My landlord had to leave before we got enough charge to run the starter. I did put my trickle charger on again and the light is on indicating that it’s charging now. I’ll check it in a few hours and see what’s up.
In the meantime, I really need to get to the grocery store soon. Lunch today was french fries and an apple.