In article ,
T i m wrote:
It was a long time ago, but a works colleague started having flat
battery problems with a Marina.

I had use of a 1.8 Twincam (?)

If only. ;-)


one of those and because it was so
light it was a bit hairy. ;-)

The TC had the larger BMC B series engine. Even heavier than the A series.
So even more terminal understeer.

--
*I get enough exercise just pushing my luck.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 25 Oct 2019 09:29:30 GMT, Tim+ wrote:

snip

Why would I I have a proper battery that does what it should, if yours
doesn't then get it fixed like a normal person would.

Ah but, most folk will only know that they have a “proper” battery if the
car starts in the morning after leaving parking lights on. Who routinely
tests their battery capacity or replaces a battery before it fails?

Quite.

Leaving parking lights on overnight is a gamble that most motorists with
real lifetime experience prefer not to take.

Except for our Den of course as he is on standby for the local
lighthouse. ;-)

The first daughter and b/f knew the battery we weak on the car they
had at the time was when they sat with the ignition / radio on for
some time and it wouldn't start afterwards. The car had been fine in
everyday use up to that point.

A young friend used a 12V vacuum cleaner to clean out the new to him
car, and the card wouldn't start afterwards (flat battery) but again,
had been 'fine' before that.

The kitcar can be left for months without being started and will
typically start first time, but that has a battery isolator so little
chance of any parasitic loads.

Cheers, T i m

In article ,
T i m wrote:
The first daughter and b/f knew the battery we weak on the car they
had at the time was when they sat with the ignition / radio on for
some time and it wouldn't start afterwards. The car had been fine in
everyday use up to that point.

Modern cars ain't going to use much current with the ignition on and
engine not running. Unless you have heater and wipers etc running too. And
a plain radio, not that much either. If the battery is in such after that
it ain't going to start the car on a cold morning, so better replaced
before it causes a real problem.

--
*60-year-old, one owner - needs parts, make offer

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Fri, 25 Oct 2019 15:11:34 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

In article ,
T i m wrote:
It was a long time ago, but a works colleague started having flat
battery problems with a Marina.

I had use of a 1.8 Twincam (?)

If only. ;-)


one of those and because it was so
light it was a bit hairy. ;-)

The TC had the larger BMC B series engine. Even heavier than the A series.
So even more terminal understeer.

I remember it being a bit 'tail happy' (because the back end was
disproportionately light)?

Cheers, T i m

On 25/10/2019 15:28, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
T i m wrote:
The first daughter and b/f knew the battery we weak on the car they
had at the time was when they sat with the ignition / radio on for
some time and it wouldn't start afterwards. The car had been fine in
everyday use up to that point.

Modern cars ain't going to use much current with the ignition on and
engine not running.

Really? My current car has a current drain of about 5A for about ten
minutes after switching it off and getting out the car and locking it.
I haven't found why yet its not the cooling fan or anything moving in
the engine bay.

It has a drain of about an amp after that. About 180mA is the always on
dash cam.

In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
On 25/10/2019 15:28, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
T i m wrote:
The first daughter and b/f knew the battery we weak on the car they
had at the time was when they sat with the ignition / radio on for
some time and it wouldn't start afterwards. The car had been fine in
everyday use up to that point.

Modern cars ain't going to use much current with the ignition on and
engine not running.

Really? My current car has a current drain of about 5A for about ten
minutes after switching it off and getting out the car and locking it.
I haven't found why yet its not the cooling fan or anything moving in
the engine bay.

It has a drain of about an amp after that. About 180mA is the always on
dash cam.

1 amp quiescent would suggest even with a large battery it ain't going to
start after 2 or 3 days unused.

--
*The colder the X-ray table, the more of your body is required on it *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On 25/10/2019 15:47, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
dennis@home wrote:
On 25/10/2019 15:28, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
T i m wrote:
The first daughter and b/f knew the battery we weak on the car they
had at the time was when they sat with the ignition / radio on for
some time and it wouldn't start afterwards. The car had been fine in
everyday use up to that point.

Modern cars ain't going to use much current with the ignition on and
engine not running.

Really? My current car has a current drain of about 5A for about ten
minutes after switching it off and getting out the car and locking it.
I haven't found why yet its not the cooling fan or anything moving in
the engine bay.

It has a drain of about an amp after that. About 180mA is the always on
dash cam.

1 amp quiescent would suggest even with a large battery it ain't going to
start after 2 or 3 days unused.


I don't worry much, it has a big battery, not the cr@p one it came with
as that failed within a year.

The RAC came to the rescue, they arranged for a taxi both ways to the QE
hospital as they couldn't get a patrol there in time for me to meet my
appointment and then arranged to send the patrol later to fix it. Failed
all the battery tests, it couldn't even unlock the car.
They fitted a bigger one under warranty, the biggest one they had that
would physically fit.

I had previously told the Ford dealer that I didn't think the battery
was as it should be but they said there was nothing wrong with it, I
don't trust them any more and I have told them so.

On Fri, 25 Oct 2019 15:28:59 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

In article ,
T i m wrote:
The first daughter and b/f knew the battery we weak on the car they
had at the time was when they sat with the ignition / radio on for
some time and it wouldn't start afterwards. The car had been fine in
everyday use up to that point.

Modern cars ain't going to use much current with the ignition on and
engine not running. Unless you have heater and wipers etc running too.

From memory they may also have used the blower and wipers
intermittently as they were waiting to collect someone from a station
and it was raining.

And
a plain radio, not that much either.

A mate took his car in for a MOT and after a few days parked at home,
it wouldn't start. He had a new alternator and then battery fitted
before he rang me. I got him to check for a parastatic load using the
festoon lamp from the interior light and it turned out to be the
radio. It wasn't on the switched live and didn't work, but the
mechanics had turned it on and not turned it off when they realised it
didn't work.

If the battery is in such after that
it ain't going to start the car on a cold morning, so better replaced
before it causes a real problem.

Except in daughters case, and in Scotland, it had been working fine.

They did replace it after that though as the issue had highlighted
that the battery was getting weak.

The point being, they hadn't realised it until that point.

Cheers, T i m

On Fri, 25 Oct 2019 15:11:34 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

In article ,
T i m wrote:
It was a long time ago, but a works colleague started having flat
battery problems with a Marina.

I had use of a 1.8 Twincam (?)

If only. ;-)


one of those and because it was so light it was a bit hairy. ;-)

The TC had the larger BMC B series engine. Even heavier than the A
series.
So even more terminal understeer.

The worst one I came across was the MGC. An MGB with a 6 cylinder B
series engine (not sure it was called the C series). And a bump in the
bonnet because of the second carb.

Understeer? Much.



--
My posts are my copyright and if @diy_forums or Home Owners' Hub
wish to copy them they can pay me £1 a message.
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

Chris J Dixon wrote:
Brian Reay wrote:

Modern cars are often fitted with remarkably small (in Ahr terms)
batteries. 35-45Ahr isnÂ’t uncommon. IÂ’m pretty sure my CRV was 45Ahr, my
MX5 35, and my wifeÂ’s Picanto also 35Ahr. Our daughters often left the
interior light on in the Picanto and my wife found the battery was dead the
next morning.

However, now that automatic stop/ start is provided more often,
there is a corresponding increase in battery capacity.

Chris

Our Smart Car has that, as does the hybrid when running on petrol although
it doesnt use the 12V battery to start the engine (other that for the
electronics, the capacity of the 12V battery is very small.)

I cant say I care for it on the Smart Car but you can turn it off, which
we normally do.

On the hybrid it is seamless and, due to the way the system works, youve
always got some battery power to get you moving. Well, until it fails I
suppose ;-)

On Fri, 25 Oct 2019 16:42:09 +0100, "dennis@home"
wrote:

snip

I don't worry much, it has a big battery, not the cr@p one it came with
as that failed within a year.

Another interesting use of the word 'cr@p' to describe a possibly poor
under specification of a perfectly good thing (a battery in this
case).

Eg, the battery itself was probably very good (most factory ones are
(or were)), often lasting a long time.

Although after going round a UK battery manufacturing plant, I'm
surprised any (12V LA) batteries work at all!

I'd put the environment alongside a chroming plant.

Cheers, T i m

"T i m" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 24 Oct 2019 22:40:35 +0100, Ian Jackson
wrote:

snip

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?

It was a long time ago, but a works colleague started having flat
battery problems with a Marina.

I had use of a 1.8 Twincam (?) one of those and because it was so
light it was a bit hairy. ;-)

Eventually I had a look, and found that
the boot light switch was a rather crude affair - a large microswitch
(?) mounted on a flimsy bracket, with a plunger that the boot lid pushed
in when it was closed. The bracket had become bent, and the boot lid no
longer contacted the plunger.

Yup, that was the sort of thing I was thinking of and I think I've
dealt with something similar.

Someone had moved a load of garden waste and a stick had gone up
inside the hinge and dislodged the switch.

As a kid I was always fascinated by anything like that (automatic /
hidden controls) ... trying to find out how it worked ... and the more
things you play with the more you learn and then find it's easier to
learn / do parallel things.

Like as a kid I was always playing with batteries, lamps and buzzers
and so had a basic understanding of electricity at an early age. Also
you learned why you only had low wattage lamps in say a cycle dynamo,
as you found when you upgraded the headlight to a more powerful lamp
and then tried to pedal the bike! ;-)

It saddens me that most kids don't seem to
be interested in anything tangible these days,

Plenty still are. One of my mates who is only
25 who I have known since he was a little kid
is a very keen vegy and fruit gardener.

many seeming to be more absorbed in 'social
communication' over a hobby or interest.

Most of them do have gaming as a hobby or interest.

We allowed / encourage / introduced our daughter
to all sorts of practical stuff from an early age, from
soldering from when she was about 6 to building
her a dolls house together a few years on. Her Mum
wasn't so confident when she would come in and have
daughter announce 'look mummy, I'm cutting plywood
for the stairs on my dolls house on daddy's bandsaw'. ;-)

But its likely that her genetics were what saw her interested in that stuff.

Might be whey in later life she bought herself a chainsaw for carving.
;-)

On Sat, 26 Oct 2019 10:02:53 +1100, cantankerous trolling geezer Rodent
Speed, the auto-contradicting senile sociopath, blabbered, again:


Plenty still are. One of my mates who is only

You DON'T have ANY mates, you clinically insane senile cretin! The people
whose stories you watch on TV documentaries are NOT your mates!

--
Marland revealing the senile sociopath's pathology:
"You have mentioned Alexa in a couple of threads recently, it is not a real
woman you know even if it is the only thing with a Female name that stays
around around while you talk it to it.
Poor sad git who has to resort to Usenet and electronic devices for any
interaction as all real people run a mile to get away from from you boring
them to death."
MID:

On 25/10/2019 11:17, NY wrote:
"Tim+" wrote in message
news:833068154.593687643.536542.tim.downie-
Park it for as short a time as possible or park elsewhere! You rarely
*have* to park somewhere where parking lights are required.Â* If you do
have
to then hope you have a good battery.

Leaving parking lights on overnight is a gamble that most motorists with
real lifetime experience prefer not to take.

Where we used to live was on a road with a 40 mph speed limit. The
council were thinking of reducing it to 30 mph, but the residents
decided to leave it at 40 (since they were given the choice) because
with a 30 mph limit, cars are allowed to park facing the direction of
traffic overnight, whereas in a 40 zone they are not

That is incorrect.

Highway code Rule 248:

"You MUST NOT park on a road at night facing against the direction of
the traffic flow unless in a recognised parking space."

Covered by law in the Construction and Uses Regulations (regulation 101)
and the Road Vehicle Lighting Regulations (regulation 24).

That applies on roads of all speeds.

Some years ago, the residents of a road three over from ours were very
annoyed to wake up to find that the police had ticketed every vehicle
that was parked the wrong way around.

- and we had a lot
of problem with the people in the houses on one side of the street
parking on the road instead of in the allocated yard at one end of the
group of houses; the houses on the opposite side all had their own
drives to park on.

I'm not sure whether the parking-with-lights regulation also featured -
maybe at 30 they could park without lights, and at 40 they needed lights
and no-one would risk leaving their lights on and flatten their battery,
which was a blunt instrument to say (effectively) no overnight parking
on the road.

Highway code Rule 249:

"All vehicles MUST display parking lights when parked on a road or a
lay-by on a road with a speed limit greater than 30 mph (48 km/h)."

Covered by law in the Road Vehicle Lighting Regulations (regulation 24).

SteveW

In article ,
Bob Eager wrote:
The TC had the larger BMC B series engine. Even heavier than the A
series.
So even more terminal understeer.

The worst one I came across was the MGC. An MGB with a 6 cylinder B
series engine (not sure it was called the C series). And a bump in the
bonnet because of the second carb.

Understeer? Much.

Yup - a real boat anchor, the C series. Brother rather liked the Austin 3
litre with that engine - a good towing car.

--
*How do you tell when you run out of invisible ink? *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
T i m wrote:
Eg, the battery itself was probably very good (most factory ones are
(or were)), often lasting a long time.

I never buy a new car - preferring to buy at about 3 years old and avoid
the worst of the depreciation. But with a full service history. And that
seems to show the original battery doesn't last as well as a decent
quality replacement. Of course it might have been badly treated before I
bought the car.

--
*Failure is not an option. It's bundled with your software.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Sat, 26 Oct 2019 11:44:47 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Yup - a real boat anchor, the C series. Brother rather liked the Austin
3 litre with that engine - a good towing car.

I'd have thought the Austin 1800 would be rather more your stamp, Dave.




--
Leave first - THEN negotiate!

In article ,
Cursitor Doom wrote:
On Sat, 26 Oct 2019 11:44:47 +0100, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Yup - a real boat anchor, the C series. Brother rather liked the Austin
3 litre with that engine - a good towing car.

I'd have thought the Austin 1800 would be rather more your stamp, Dave.

Perhaps one day you'll actually read a post you're replying to? Fat chance.

--
*Everyone has a photographic memory. Some don't have film *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

On Sat, 26 Oct 2019 11:48:28 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

In article ,
T i m wrote:
Eg, the battery itself was probably very good (most factory ones are
(or were)), often lasting a long time.

I never buy a new car - preferring to buy at about 3 years old and avoid
the worst of the depreciation. But with a full service history. And that
seems to show the original battery doesn't last as well as a decent
quality replacement. Of course it might have been badly treated before I
bought the car.

Quite.

I was just going from the observation that many people that have taken
their cars to my friends garage have stated (or he has observed) that
they are still bearing the factory fitted battery when the vehicle was
then quite old (as confirmed by the markings, vehicle reg and the
battery date code etc).

The only ever new car I've had was my company Sierra and in spite of
many stop / starts (I lived near to work, came home for lunch when not
on site and used it for lights when camping etc), I seem to remember
it lasting a good few years from new. I think I fitted the biggest
battery the tray would take when it needed replacing because 1) It
wasn't my money and 2) I wasn't using it typically (re the camping
etc) and was often towing (so had an extra pair of lamps on it).

Cheers, T i m

Cursitor Doom wrote:

I'd have thought the Austin 1800 would be rather more your stamp, Dave.

When I inherited my Dad's Austin 1800, in many ways it was a step
up from my Beetle, but it was quite old, and the gears became
troublesome, some were unselectable with a cold engine. Much
tinkering with the cable linkage had no effect.

The fix came serendipitously when I put in a different multigrade
engine oil, as it also lubricates the gearbox.

My dad had it re sprayed in "Rover" brown. Its sills still rusted
through, so jacking was a bit tricky. Very heavy steering - multi
storey car parks were a trial.

Then there was the time it was sitting down on the offside, so I
asked them to pump up the suspension. Turned out the engine mount
had failed, and its downward progress had been arrested by the
shearing off of a pipe stub on the main hydrolastic unit :-(

When I came to trade it in, the battery terminals were a bit
dodgy, and it wouldn't turn over when I tried to start it for the
salesman to value. I lifted the bonnet and pushed the solenoid, a
handy facility in simpler times, and it burst into life. Salesman
bemused - turned out he had only just taken the job, previously
being a golf pro, and clearly knew less about cars than I did
about golf.

Chris
--
Chris J Dixon Nottingham UK
@ChrisJDixon1

Plant amazing Acers.

In article ,
Chris J Dixon wrote:
When I inherited my Dad's Austin 1800, in many ways it was a step
up from my Beetle, but it was quite old, and the gears became
troublesome, some were unselectable with a cold engine. Much
tinkering with the cable linkage had no effect.

The fix came serendipitously when I put in a different multigrade
engine oil, as it also lubricates the gearbox.

Later cars had a rod gearchange. In some ways a retrograde step as that
developed lots of 'slop' with age. And of course cable changes are very
common these days.

--
*When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article , "Dave Plowman (News)"
writes
In article ,
T i m wrote:
Eg, the battery itself was probably very good (most factory ones are
(or were)), often lasting a long time.

I never buy a new car - preferring to buy at about 3 years old and avoid
the worst of the depreciation. But with a full service history. And that
seems to show the original battery doesn't last as well as a decent
quality replacement. Of course it might have been badly treated before I
bought the car.

Only needs to be allowed to go flat once.
Battery on wife's car has already lasted 6 years, Defender lasted 9.
Replacement lasted less than 12 months as it was allowed to go flat.
Replaced by Halfords FOC.
--
bert