So yesterday not only didn’t the wash flood, it never rained at all. Didn’t see that coming.
Here’s another thing I didn’t see coming…
The battery went flat completely out of the blue. I’d blame corrosion on the battery posts except I just cleaned them a month ago when that cable broke.
This was extremely concerning, because I can’t possibly replace the battery before Saturday and between now and then I’ve got things going on that require the Jeep. I already missed doing one of them, Ghost didn’t get his evening walky and there’ll be a price to pay for that. He did get fed, though.
It’s probably my own damned fault since I’ve been leaving the key on to listen to the Jeep radio while working on the Lair.
I’ll check the posts again today but it’s an old battery and I’m pretty sure it just took this annoying opportunity to die.
Now when things like this happen, my first reaction is to drag out the Battery Minder a friend of the gulch donated to me several years ago. It takes several hours, it’s not a good battery jumper, but it can jazz some life into a dying battery. So good news – I have one of those.
Bad news: It’s six o’clock in the evening, the sun’s going down, and the Lair has a tiny battery bank. Normally I’d be cursing and swinging wrenches, then laboriously dragging the battery over the ridge to sponge off Ian’s electricity.
But it occurred to me that – good news – the Lair’s battery isn’t really quite so tiny any more. Four T-105s should be great plenty to recharge and recondition one little Jeep battery. This would actually be a good test of that proposition. And tomorrow should get fairly good sun for recharging.
So I did that, and – good news!
The batteries felt that, but pretty much shrugged it off as no big deal.
Also – good news – the Jeep runs.
Now I still have to replace the battery. This was just a warning. But – good news! – the money stash is fairly flush thanks to recent contributions. The contributions were for building materials, I presume, but under the circumstances this is sort of that.
Back to bad news. I woke this morning to an emailed message I’ve been waiting for for months. Tom Cryar, long-time sort-of neighbor, blog lurker and personal friend, has died after a years-long battle with what turned out to be all sorts of cancer. I haven’t seen or heard from Tom in quite some time but he was a really nice guy and I’m saddened that I’ll see him no more.
One reason that the Lair batteries shrugged off the load of charging the Jeep battery is that it’s really easy to recharge a battery that retains only a fraction of its original capacity. It’s like refilling a tiny cup vs. a much larger one.
Yep, spend the bux to replace the Jeep battery, unless you have taken a sudden new liking to walkies..
That’s true, but a battery minder does more than charge the battery; it pulses it to break up sulfate deposits on the plates and get the chemicals back into suspension in the electrolyte. So it uses more electricity than a regular charger.
Hope you get some more life out of your battery.
My condolences to you and Mr. Cryar’s family.
I know you were a wrench but it would be a good idea if you didn’t already do so to check the jeeps charging system before the battery purchase. Just to rule it out at the very least.
Joel, sorry to hear about the loss of your friend Tom. Losing friends, even if we know their illness leads to the inevitable, is not easy. Peace to your heart.
I love battery minders that sort of rejuvenate the battery. I have one for the MG to hold a charge on the battery through long Montana winters. Does it help if you put it on the battery a few nights in a row so it has a chance to do its thing as well as possible?
Certainly can’t hurt, but I don’t like to leave things on at night. So as soon as I’m done with my morning running around I’ll put it back on the battery and leave it on all day. And since the morning has dawned with heavy overcast, I’ll do it at Ian’s place. 🙂
Won’t be a permanent fix, though. Car batteries are lightweight bits of fluff compared to household batteries, they have a quite finite lifespan and you can jazz some temporary life into the corpse but you can’t really fix them. I could go on like this for months, or I can just bite the bullet and replace the damned thing while there’s money in the bank to do that.