cars and lockdown

[EddieM]

Just a quick note to anyone who is seeing odd warnings on their dashboard in the current climate of lockdown.

Many of these errors, could well be false and could very easily be caused by a low battery. My car in particular which is hardly driven at the moment has shown an engine warning light, gone into limp mode, and also shown a park brake error. All of these cleared after the battery was charged.

Either that, or it's goosed!

 

[chainsaw_masochist]

Already noticed quite a few rescue services attending to vehicles with cables linked to batteries in the neighbouring streets. Presumably the AA and RAC will be inundated over the ensuing weeks as (if?) lockdown is lifted. One would imagine that the battery charger industry will hitting some big bonuses.

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

I've been taking mine for a bit of a weekly blast down the local dual carriageway, hopefully enough to keep the battery topped up and everything running OK!

 

[ericmark]

My charger is doing the rounds, battery to battery, likely the batteries have never been so good from new. But the street I have never seen so full of cars, each house when built had a garage, with a very steep drive to the garage, will guess mine is about 1:6, so most have turned garage into a room, dug up drive, and made into stepped gardens, very few even have a drive, clearly you can't run extension leads across a public path. And if you remove battery then radios etc to reset.

The problem is a lead acid battery takes time to charge, very quickly my charger drops into second stage of charging there are four stages, so it would not matter if 3.8A or 38A charge time is nearly the same, what matters is how long it has been discharged for, start a car and run it the energy taken to start it is replaced in seconds, leave it with a radio back-up drawing maybe just 0.01 amp, for two months, and it can take a week to put that back in.

When my mother and father-in-law died when clearing the houses we found some batteries which had likely stood for years, and only way to charge was to put another good battery in parallel as the smart charger reverse battery protection and over volt protection stopped them being used direct, all but one recovered, so taking two weeks to even start charging.

Even when not left for long discharged, i.e. boot light left on for a week when lid not closed correctly, I found checking battery with hydrometer two weeks latter and battery still not fully charged, as it takes time. So going for a run no good, your not out long enough, has to be a battery charger.