It's another of those typical monsoon-season days - clouds down on the deck, and rainy and dull. It's a good day to take the car in for its regular lube and pre-winter check-up.
While there, waiting for a shuttle ride back home, a lady came in for service and among other things, mentioned that her battery had recently died, and needed a boost to get her going. Being the buttinsky that I am, I said, "Excuse me, but is most of your driving just short little trips?" She said, "Yes, it is." I said, "I have the same problem - and it's because we're taking more out of the battery getting started than the driving puts back while we're running. So to help avoid that, we need to go for a longer drive once a week or so, to get the battery fully recharged again."
On the way home in the shuttle, we were talking more about that, and the driver pointed out that all new vehicles equipped with internal computers will have about 20 milliamps of constant drain on the battery, just keeping their monitoring systems active. So if you aren't driving the car for a while, such as if you're going away on vacation, he advises that we disconnect the battery before we go, to avoid having a dead battery when we come back.
Good advice.
No comments:
Post a Comment