No, I'm not talking Evil Knievil......

My wife (yes the same one who locks herself out of the SC430), also finds unique ways to run down the battery, most often when its home in the garage. I'll go out and have the dreaded click, click, click.

I have a trickle charger, which is great for fixing the problem when I'm not in a hurry. I need a solution for those times that I have to start the car immediately.

Would the best solution be to have a spare battery in the garage to jump from with traditional cables? How about one of those "Power Pak" units with the jumper cables built in? How big (cranking amps) do I need for the SC430? Any other ideas (new wife = not helpful!)?

 

It would work keeping in mind the best way to jump the car is positive to positive and negative to a good ground and not negative on the drained vehicle.

 

I don't have a solution because when this happens to me I have another car along side in the garage that I use for jumping. However, the reason I've also had many drained batteries is because the lights will stay on if you leave any of the doors or trunk slightly ajar. The best way to address this is to turn them off manually when you pull into the garage. I've asked my dealer if the headlights could be programmed to always turn off after, say 1 minute, regardless of whether a door is open and he said no.

 

I have a battery pack. Its easier for me to jump it when its in the garage.

 

Sounds like the battery pack is the way to go. Any idea what specs I'd need for a routine jump? (e.g. peak amps)?

Obviously more amps is better, but more amps is also more space and I'm thinking of keeping this in the trunk.

There's a pretty small one with 900 peak amps and 9 amp hour capacity. Strange, but these pacs don't seem to have cold cranking ratings.

 

I've never looked at what my pack was rated. My wife bought it for me for Christmas....it came with a crappy air compressor.