blog.noetech.com

Changing a Car Battery

I hate modern cars. Everything has to be so difficult. Starting a few weeks ago, something went wrong with the 2000 Jetta I have. One morning it wouldn't start, the battery was dead. Got the car jumped and off I went. A couple of days later it wouldn't start again. Hoping it was a bad battery, and not something electrical that was draining the it, I went out and bought a new one.

Here's the fun part, changing the fucking thing. In any old car, the process would take ten minutes, maybe a few minutes longer in a Bug, but nothing significant. Today I spent two fucking hours trying to get the damn thing switched out. Part of this was my fault, I don't have a full set of tools anymore, haven't since I left Fond du Lac, so that always makes it harder. But still, two hours?

I had to take off the cables. There's not just two anymore either. There's a whole box of wires sitting on top of the batter with fuses and other crap. Then I had to take off a shell that wraps the battery. It was non to obvious exactly how to do that either. There appeared to be two screws way down that needed to be removed. Of course I don't have a socket extension that long, so most of my time was spent trying to figure out a way to either get one or do without.

This was the part that took most of my time. Finally I realized how to take the shell off with out removing those bolts. So with that out of the way, now all I had to do was remove the clamp at the base. The problem here was that there was no way I was going to get a socket to fit in the little tiny crevice they gave it. In order to get the socket in there I had to remove the back of the headlight housing.

With that done, I switched out the battery and hooked it up. I went to start the car and....nothing. All kinds of weird clicks coming from the dash while the digital readouts went crazy, but the car didn't turn over. Turns out I just needed to let the car sit for awhile and "charge". Charge what I don't know, but twenty minutes later the car started right up.

God, I just want my 1965 Porsche 912.

Here's hoping it's not something with the electrical that's draining the battery. I don't think it is. There was a lot of the battery acid corrode powder stuff (is there a word for that) all around.