What Annoyed You Today? (1 Viewer)

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The battery on the 'Tin Tent' was low, as it hadn' been driven for a few weeks. So, put it on charge for over 24 hours, and then put it back on the van.
Turned over a couple of times without firing, then the battery went flat !
Not sure if the battery is knackered, or the battery charger is duff - need to try another charger first - but bl**dy frustrating !
 
I had a similar experience earlier this fall. Left the lights on all day and the battery was dead when I got off work. Oh, did I mention it was raining? A lot! And I was parked across the parking lot from the building. Fortunately we have a couple battery chargers in the shop, but I needed two extension cords to reach the car. Did I mention this was in a cold downpour?
Finally got the engine to kick over, but then had to reel up the cords and put away the charger. By the time I was ready to go I was soaked to the skin, the front seat of the car was like a bathtub, and my stash of fast food napkins were paper mache. The seat was still squishy two days later, and the battery wouldn't hold a charge. Had to be replaced.
 
I don't know about modern batteries but back in the early 70s (first big gas crisis) the was a temporary surge in in interest in "electric cars" mostly home built.
any articles cautioned strongly against using normal car batteries as they were not designed for deep discharge (unlike some marine batteries) and the general rule of of thumb was that if you ran a noraml battery even of new, down to dead flat, you had lost about 25% of it's capacity permanently (an 80 amp hour battery was now a 60 amp hour battery) and if you did it twice the battery only held about 50% of it's rated capacity. After being on a battery charger you could get the proper voltage on a voltage tester but is simply wouldn't put out voltage for very long.
If your battery is several years old and you run it down dead flat you are in even worse trouble.
 
I suspect the battery is knackered. It's just turned three years old, but until very recently, it would discharge slowly, over a period of around two weeks, if the vehicle wasn't used or the engine run every few days.
This seems to have been some sort of parasitic drain, but no one could find the cause, although it was possibly related to the split charge system (used to re-charge the second, leisure battery).
So I had a battery cut-out switch fitted, which solved that particular problem. However, as the battery has been virtually fully discharged a number of times, I really think that it's now very degraded, and needs replacing.
 
After almost 3 weeks of having a unbearable headache every night and getting 2 or 3 hours sleep a night i decided it was time to do something about and headed over to the docs. Never had one of these spells last longer than a week. If it keeps up I'll likely loose my job at some point. Tuff to do an acceptable job on about 10 hours sleep in a week.
 
Nearly meeting my maker on the way up north last friday!!!!
Traffic on the freeway started to slow, so I started to slow down, looked in my rear view mirror as saw a huge semi-truck barreling down on me with smoke pouring off the brakes and the trailer signing wildly back and forth. Another semi in front of me as well. Could not bail to the right as traffic was stopped by then, and did not dare go left as I could see that was where the semi driver was trying to go but was having a hard time getting things under control, also had a steep ditch and narrow shoulder on that side. I don't think he was paying close enough attention to the road as I never hit my breaks hard, just a steady slowing down, who knows, things happen fast.
He did finally get it all stopped, but I'm sure his heart was pounding as hard as mine. I surely though I was going to bite the dust.
 
Nearly meeting my maker on the way up north last friday!!!!
Traffic on the freeway started to slow, so I started to slow down, looked in my rear view mirror as saw a huge semi-truck barreling down on me with smoke pouring off the brakes and the trailer signing wildly back and forth. Another semi in front of me as well. Could not bail to the right as traffic was stopped by then, and did not dare go left as I could see that was where the semi driver was trying to go but was having a hard time getting things under control, also had a steep ditch and narrow shoulder on that side. I don't think he was paying close enough attention to the road as I never hit my breaks hard, just a steady slowing down, who knows, things happen fast.
He did finally get it all stopped, but I'm sure his heart was pounding as hard as mine. I surely though I was going to bite the dust.
Wow, sounds like something out of the movies. At least you survived and didn't become a semi-sandwich...
 

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