On Wed, 23 Oct 2019 09:59:20 +0100, "dennis@home"
wrote:

On 23/10/2019 08:30, Tim+ wrote:

About 40 years ago my mother bought a Fiat 124 which was the first car I
ever saw with a boot light. I was demonstrating this to my future
father-in-law when we discovered it had no switch but was permanently on


Um, sounds like ******** to me. So the battery was running flat every day?

Tim


Car batteries don't run flat every day just because there is a 5W load
on them.

What about the sort of capacity battery that would have been found on
something like that in 1979 in the middle of the winter?

Say it was a 40Ah new, down to 30Ah because of it's age and now 15Ah
because of the cold ... and it will only restart the engine when the
battery is greater than 50% charged, then it can only take a (say) .5A
parasitic load for 14 hours?

I still don't believe a boot light wouldn't have a switch of some sort
though, possibly a gravity one or a micro switch up in the hinges
somewhere?

Cheers, T i m