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flat battery

Oh yee of little faith...! I'd be a bit surprised if, from your diags it wasn't the loose connections. Just thank your lucky stars it was not a 964.. the ECU didn't like it up'um Mr mannering!! Had similar dodgy contacts on my 964 when I first got it. Finger tight but not tight enough is how I would discribe the terminals.. Took me quite a while to figure what was going on.

Fingers cross and happy motoring! [sm=spanner3.gif]
 
Perhaps someone with spanners will put me straight on this one, but here goes....

Similarly, I've just bought an SC that hadn't been getting regular use and suffered a similar problem, but with a different cause. Apparently a lead acid battery left unused / uncharged over extended period will become "sulphated" and therefore lose its capacity to hold charge quicker than a battery that's used in a car regularly. E.g. not enough juice to start the car the car 3 days idle after a 40-50 mile / one hour run, which should have fully charged it it. So I ended up buying a new battery.

What I propose to do is to get a solar trickle charger to keep the new battery tip-top. These plug in the cigarette lighter, which means you can leave the battery terminals tightly secured and undisturbed under the bonnet. Maplins do a nice range of these from £10-£40ish, the better ones needing just daylight rather than full-on sunlight to provide current. Luckily I'm blessed with skylight panels in the garage, so you may need to contrive some kind of fag-lighter extension cord to get the panel to daylight, say inside a window. (They don't appear to be weatherproof at the cheaper end)

If this works as they claim, it ought to extend the useful battery life by a couple of years. More important than that to me though is saving the old girl from the indignity of being publicly jump started by her very distant Volksvagen cousin!
 
Chris,

The honeycomb construction of the cell plates lets go of the 'spungy lead' (pb02) and as you say the contents drop. Worst case, the sulphated lead will short out the cells - result zero volts out let alone zero amps.. With care they should last years (especially Bosche and Varta who only build a top quality battery). My Bosche Silver Top was in the car when I bought it 6 years ago. But that said, they need maintaining right from new. Your proposed 'float charge' system is fine but nothing will beat a regular good run - better for the car too, seals, piston rings, brakes etc in fact everything 'moving' mechanically.

Cheers

Dave [sm=spanner3.gif]
 
Swing the lamp and I'll sing you a sea shanty....

Yep. Very sad. I had a chat with a submariner once about batteries. Scary

How sad is this though. Taking aged parents to the Coachway this morning, talk got round to his old cars. I remembered three models and reg numbers in a row:

Morris Oxford BUR 655 F
Volvo 144 DLY 968 J
Volvo 145 VGW 115 M (SERIOUS impact bumbers!)

Straight of the top of my head. Can't remember what I had for breakfast though.

Ah! Last Dog - off to mix meself a Martini....
 
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