Many years ago I had a problem with my car. It kept losing power from the battery and despite my efforts to find the fault, I couldn’t. It was also intermittent, which didn’t make that task any easier. Finally, I bought a cheap chinese jumper pack and that kept me going until I could get an electrician to fix the problem. After years of neglect and not being used, the thing was finally declared dead.
I hooked a battery charger up to it and left it for a while. No result. The battery was absolutely dead.
Not being the type to simply give up on things, I decided to assault the thing and open it up to get at the gubbins of it. I expected to see a lot of wires, electronic wizardy and various other things that would make any repair impossible.
Not at all. The guts are very simple. A large sealed battery, a small electronic board unit which steers the voltmeter, charge indicator, an on/off switch and a lamp.
But it is only a battery, I thought. A battery that could be replaced very easily. Off to the internet then and see what I could find. Which didn’t take long. A local parts dealer, not far away, had the exact battery.
I rang them up, reserved one and collected it today.
Replacement was simple and very quickly done. I hooked my charger up to it and topped up the battery.
That took precisely one hour. It lives again.
I have a slightly more expensive jumper pack which lives in the boot of my car. That one gets regularly topped up to keep it fresh. This one will live in the iShed with the motorbike. I’ll take better care of it now.
The Exile Files 