9 June 2008 - 11:22Bad Timing Battery Failure

Some of you are already aware of this story of woe, but for those of you who aren’t I thought I would post the tale.

You see a couple of weeks back we had a really cold snap for about a week. I remember it clearly as it was a Monday night and I went out to the car as I had to pick up my girlfriend from work. It was fairly cold, and my car just refused to start.

The next day I tried again, and it still failed to start. I called my brother and he had his girlfriend come over the next day and we tried to boost my car. We spent about an hour trying to jump start it without luck. Thats when I figured my battery was toast.

I headed out to my favorite store Canadian Tire to get a new battery. This time all went well, and I wasn’t screwed around. However in order to replace the battery on my PT Cruiser, you have to remove the air intake system. Filter, hoses and all.

I spent about 2 hours out in the bitter cold, with a wind chill of around -25 degrees Celsius.

Once freshly installed I tried again, but still no luck. I didn’t spend too much time on this as I didn’t want to kill a brand new battery. With tomorrow being a warmer day I tried again. This time my car fired right up.

Finally after a 3 day experience my car was up and running again. Since this time, it hasn’t given me any more trouble no matter what the temperature. The old battery was about 4 years old, so it was no surprise it needed replacing. I just wish the timing was a little better.