Shelby's Life and Whatnot

Starting My Car

Which is actually more complex than it sounds. Monday night I went to go to grocery store but when I walked into the garage and saw the driver's side door only barely, slightly ajar, I knew immediately I was going to have a dead battery. Sure enough, I did. Dead, dead, dead. No clicking, no interior lights--nothing.

Cindy (Kevin's mom) was bringing the dogs over Tuesday afternoon after Zach got out of school, so I called and asked her to bring some jumper cables. She confirmed that they did have them, but did I know how to use them? Having owned a crappy car with a battery problem, I did indeed. However, she called Ken (Kevin's dad) and he said that the cables they had were not very good, so she called Grandpa Lee to come over and give me a jump.

Grandpa Lee arrived first, being a very short distance away, and we discussed the problem of that once the car was jumped, I'd have to drive it around for a while (no idea how long that might take) to charge up the battery again. Given that Cindy and the dogs were on her way over, Grandpa went home to get his charger.

Cindy arrives with the dogs and they both seemed pretty nonchalant about seeing me. I expected massive barking but aside from a few woofs, there really wasn't any. Grandpa arrives again and we set about to hooking up the battery. We pop the hood and...no battery. Grandpa gets the flashlight...no battery. We push the car out of the garage into the sunlight...no battery. What the hell? Finally Grandpa says, "Do you have the manual?" and yes, of course I do! *flip flip flip* "The battery is in the trunk." Never heard of THAT before!

So we jump it and it starts, and we pull it back into the garage and hook it up to the charger. Grandpa says it should only take all night. All night! Ack! So Cindy drove me to the grocery store to stock up for a few days of dinner.

Complicating the situation is the fact that the battery is 6 years old. Time for a new one? Possibly. Will it hold the charge after being 100% drained? Maybe. So anyway, this morning I went out and started it up and it was just as fine as could be. I drove it around for 1/2 an hour, then hooked the charger back up just to be safe. I've got an appointment this afternoon that I don't want to miss, so I'm hoping it will work again. I think it should be just fine, but we may be looking into batteries once Kevin gets home.