I'm having trouble with my battery. Recently, while I had my dash semi-torn apart, my battery died. I was in the process of installing the NOKIA cellular hands free kit. I finished the install and jumped the car, and all seemed well for a few days, but I could tell that the battery was still weak. I recently left for a few days, and when I returned the battery was dead again!

There is obviously a drain somwhere, and I can't figure out how my hands free installation caused it, if that is the case. It could just coincidental that died while I was 'operating'.

Does anyone have any suggestions for me? I am thinking of buying a charger, and charging it up solidly, but I don't want to come home from the airport and have my car be dead again.... ideas?

Thanks,

Ben.

How old is your car battery? Batteries typically die around 4 - 5 years age even though the fluid is at proper level and ph balanced due to internal shorts in the cells itself.

Assuming you have a good battery, and the water level is low, add deionized or distilled water to get it to the proper levels, and get a charger and charge fully. Running the car around and having the alternator do all the charging won't fully charge a battery if the battery is about 10% charged. You'll have to drive at least 10 hours to get the battery fully charged using the alternator. Get a cheap trickle charger, 6A or so and charge overnight. Make sure you do this in a well ventilated area.

Well, let's say you do have a slow drain killing your battery overnight. Get an ammeter that can measure at least 10A. Any less, you'll fry the equipment. Place it in series with the positive cable - ignition off, everything you know electrically is off. The only current you should see is a few tens of milliamps from the ECU, radio and clock. Any higher, is probably another electrical source is consuming power, such as the rear dome lights, trunk lights, stereo amplifiers on (not standby) etc etc. Best way to figure out which one is to take out the fuses one at a time until current is pretty low.

If you don't have an ammeter, I use the scratch the positive battery clamp to the post method and observe tiny sparks. Large current produces larger sparks. small residual current almost produces none. If you can't figure it out, go get help from a shop who has a good electrical technician.

If you leave it in the airport, you can take the battery negative off, but you won't have an alarm. When you get back, you'll have to reprogram your clock and radio stations, but don't worry about the ECU. Data is stored in the chip. You'll delete some fault codes and have to reteach your car again.

Good luck :-)

load checked at an auto parts store. This places a heavy load on the battery like when you start the car and shows how good the battery is. Hope for a bad battery because this is the easiest problem to fix. Check all lights to make sure they go off in trunk etc. and check the last thing you did to your car. This is a highly suspect area. Do you know why your battery died in the first place when you "tore up dash" ?

this time year I see a lot of battery posts corrode. You might want to clean them (the autoparts stores sell a fancy wire brush, I use fine sandpaper), and don't forget the inside of the clamp.