So, you get in your car, turn the key, and it clicks once and doesn't start. What's one to conclude? That the battery is dead. So, one gets a jump start and drives happily off. Until the highway onramp, where one is idling in the line for the "metered entrance" light to turn green. Where the voltmeter promptly chitters around 12 for a while, drops to 8, and then everything gets really quiet. With not even enough power left to drive the 4-way flashers.
What's one to do?
Well, the obvious solution is to call a tow truck or such, get the car towed somewhere, and have it fixed. Right? Unfortunately, that's an annoyingly expensive solution that involves waiting for someone else to fix the car.
Oh, and for those who don't know me terribly well, I keep a full auto kit in the back of my car - I almost left the emergency kit at home, but decided to bring it since it had jumper cables & such in it. I also keep a reasonable sized tool kit with a wide variety of sockets, wrenches, screwdrivers, and other things, all in a mixture of english and metric sizes.
So, the Russ solution involves the following logic: "The car ran fine until the RPMs dropped for long enough, at which point it died. It ran fine until such time. Therefore, if I keep the RPMs up, the car will run, and I can get to a parts store."
The onramp was two lanes, and it wasn't terribly heavy traffic - I wasn't really blocking access, though the right lane was useless with me in it. Someone eventually stopped, got her jeep turned around (on the onramp), and gave me a jump start. It rapidly became obvious that if I took my foot off the gas, the car would stall again, so she successfully disconnected the jumper cables, closed the hood of my car, and the hatch, and off I went.
Driving when one needs to keep the engine RPMs over 2000 is interesting. As I rapidly learned, it involves keeping the right foot on the gas pedal, and using the left foot to work the brake & clutch. Braking involves stepping on the clutch, putting the car into neutral, and braking. Stoplights involve the car in neutral at 2000 RPM, followed by releasing the brake, pressing the clutch, waiting for the synchros to drop the input shaft speed to zero, and accelerating off. I managed to do this all the way to the parts store I discovered last week, and promptly stalled out in the parking lot while trying to avoid other cars. Coast into a parking spot and call it good.
I took the old battery in to the store, and they load tested it. It failed - horribly. It showed fully charged, and under load dropped to somewhere around 1-2 volts. I also noticed when taking it out that there was no hold down strap - once I disconnected the cables, I lifted the battery out. And the negative terminal involved just pulling it off - I didn't even have to unscrew the bolt.
The current solution involves a new battery, pieces to hold it in place, and a new negative pole connector. It works just fine now!
So, two hours and $60 later, my car's back to running just fine.
This brings up an interesting point I debate with the guy I work for on occasion. His feeling on cars is "I drive mine. If it doesn't work, someone else takes care of it for me." My feeling is "I drive mine. If I'm driving my car, I rely on it to get me from point A to point B. If the car breaks somewhere between A and B, if it's simple, I should be able to fix it. If it breaks at A or B, I should be able to attempt to fix it if it's not something major."
In this case, having the tools & such in the back of my car and the inclination to go replace the battery myself saved me a large chunk of money and quite a bit of time. Towing isn't cheap, and I'm betting that parts & labor for a new battery if it was installed would have run me a LOT more than $60. Plus, I doubt I'd have my car available in the morning to go to work.
If you're still reading, go ahead & post a comment on your most likely reaction to your car dying while on an on-ramp. :-)
-=Russ=-
Posted by rgraves at June 8, 2004 08:14 PM