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If you cannot do a trickle charger disconnect the negative terminal. I do this all the time with my turbo. No problems. Even longer than a month. Don't immediately go out and get the car smogged afterwards you will fail.
Unlock car, pop hood, lock the doors, disconnect battery, shut hood - go on vacation.
charger is way better then disconnect battery
if you must disconnect battery, MAKE SURE HE DOES NOT NEED TO RENEWAL WITH SMOG CHK in then next 2-3 months.
doing the "drive cycle" for CA smog... I think I rather just drive the car into a tree.
you can put your collision ins on hold over the winter??
yes assuming you have a normal policy. if you have a collector car policy they may not allow it. The key is to remember to put it back on before you start driving the car.
I'd consider a solar powered battery maintainer that simply plugs into the cig lighter. Won't lose computer and radio codes. Given the small battery drain by the electronics, a month is kinda borderline for ensuring that there will be enough power to start. Even if a maintainer could keep up with half of the draw in a low light environment, you should have plenty of amps remaining to crank.
you can put your collision ins on hold over the winter??
Yes. I have State Farm. Been doing this for over 13 years. It costs about $80 total to keep each car insured during winter hibernation, from mid-October through mid-March/April.
How simple/obvious is it to do LexVan's recommendation of 1) pull fuel relay, 2) crank car, 3) put relay back, 4) start car (aka where is the fuel relay)?
Thanks again for the tips guys
The relays are in your frunk. Passanger side. Under the black cover.:
^ u only need that if you drive very very little or if you disconnected batt4ery and often you have to do it several times to get everything to reset.
trust me... it will drive you crazy.
He's not as OCD as we are (lol), a bit old fashioned that so long as it just starts and runs in a month he'll be happy. You think pulling the fuel relay is necessary? I'd need to coach him to do thatI wish it was an option, no tappable power/outlets near his parking stall since he's in an apartment building (this was my first thought)
If there is any daylight, there are trickle chargers with a small solar panel that'll work
HI all, we have a couple solutions for this type of thing.
We are a Lithium Battery company (Antigravity Batteries) and make a Car Battery (the RS-30) that won't ever go dead because it puts itself to sleep if it senses over-discharge... yet saves just enough reserve energy to start itself again with the press of its RE-START button located on the Battery. This means no matter what you did you could actually start you car again. See the video below it explains it better than me typing another paragraph. So that would help Sams Dad, but that is something requiring a new battery, and may not be the best route unless you are also looking for the lightweight benefits of Lithium also.
But we have another solution that uses ourMICRO-START mini Jump Starters (or any other brand) We make a Wiring Harness kit that attaches directly to the battery.... then in the event your battery is drained you can just plug in a MICRO-START and energize your system to Open the Frunk OR just Jump STart the Car. I have some images below of the new longer one that I made for my GT3, that is coming out in about 6 weeks. But we also have a shorter one that would work but not as cleanly as the longer one. They are at this link... https://shop.antigravitybatteries.com/products/accessories/battery/cables-parts/clampless-starting-harness-sport-xp1-xp3/. So essentially if you had something like our MICRO-START SPORTmode (about as big as two iphones stacked on top of eachother), and this Clampless Harness kit you could easily jump starter your vehicle if it was over-discharged, or energize your system if you need to get into the frunk, and not have to go to the fuse panel to energize your system.
We are a Lithium Battery company (Antigravity Batteries) and make a Car Battery (the RS-30) that won't ever go dead because it puts itself to sleep if it senses over-discharge...
Details on how that works with respect to voltage and time?
Same for charging with voltage regulators offering different voltage cutoffs.