Whew.
I’ve had trouble with the Jeep’s battery since winter before last. Since I never had trouble with it during the summer, I rarely gave it much thought. In the winter I was too cold and broke to do much more than think about it. But this was clearly its last season – if I didn’t put it on a charger every other night, every single night when it was below freezing, the Jeep wasn’t going anywhere the next morning. But batteries are expensive.
Craigslist can be a wonderful thing. I’ve got some friends who have become real Craigslist-watchers, and one of them found me a local guy who had a nearly new battery he wanted to let go fairly cheap. With the help of Landlady, I hooked up with him weekend before last, and then I had a nearly-new battery. Trouble is, it was a side-terminal style and wouldn’t bolt right to the Jeep. I didn’t even know they still made those miserable things, but it was now what I had.
It took nearly another week before I could get back to town and buy a set of adapters at the auto parts store. This morning I found that the Jeep’s terminals didn’t fit the adapters. I had already swapped out the batteries when I learned this, and the last thing I wanted to do was put the old battery back. I tried finagling the adapters every which way, and they just wouldn’t work. So I rummaged around and found a pair of bolts with the right thread size. Too long, of course, so I carefully cut them off. With a few washers to get the fit just right, the Jeep now starts with a fair show of enthusiasm. We’ll see how well it holds up after we’ve bumped through the desert a bit. I’ll be keeping tools handy.
If you are just using standard bolts, you might want to hit ’em with a bit of paint or grease to keep things from rusting together.