Just a Spark

In line with the awfully cold weather, I have not been able to start my car for the past couple of days. At first I attributed this to the weather, though mom's car seems to start no problem. My car is about 3-4 years older,and has about 100,000 more miles, if you can believe that. My car is the one that has traversed New England going to hockey games, not to mention several trips to Quebec City. I've also left my lights a few times, thus running the battery down. Suffice it to say, my battery is older and is holding less charge. This is not a problem on any given day, but with the temperatures falling to -20 degrees, it has become a problem.

I've had it jump started a couple of times, and I purchased a charger to juice up the battery overnight. I got what's known as a pulse charger, which sends a small charge (< 1amp) over a long period of time, thus re-filling the battery. It sounded good to me, but unfortunately, it didn't work. I then started investigating getting a new battery, which would have set me back about $150. Boy, the past few months have really been about car repair and maintenance. I then got to thinking that if I could just survive these brutally cold days, the car would reliably start once the warmer weather set in. In fact, and this is interesting, one day last week the temperatures rose to about 10 degrees in the AM (a high of about 25 - woo-hoo), and if you can believe this, the car started. I was so stoked, and it sort of vindicated my theory about the temperature.

The only problem is, the next day it dropped to below zero, and there is no relief in sight. Plus, it's only January, and we have at least two more months of freezing temps. February is often the coldest month. So we are back to thinking about replacing the battery. In the meantime, I got a jump box for about $40, and it has done a good job of starting my car. I've found that the first start of the day is the big problem, and once that has happened, even if the car has sat for the entire day, it generally starts. Hmm, what to make of this?

I'll probably get a new battery at some point, but in the meantime, at least I can get the Mighty Fit started.

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Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to Ark Angel for the pic.