Scott Scharton

Anyone in the Bay Area , near walnut creek able to help with this problem? Can't open front trunk to charge or replac battery. Trying to avoid having cat towed and paying big bucks for something I should be able to fix myself. Not very handy but I did try hooking up battery charger to red trunk fuse but that did not work. Please help. Thanks

Davev

You have an emergency release cable (mine was on the passenger side) somewhere in the wheel well. It's a small diameter wire cable with a loop. Find it and you will be in good shape. Then for next time- route the cable and put the loop behind the tow bar access cover.

sjfehr

The location of the release cable depends on the model year. What year is this?

Scott- you may be able to google this faster than we can respond; some model years take a little more digging to get to the cable than others, but if you can get the mechanical release, you can pop the frunk and charge/change the battery.

Scott Scharton

2001 boxster s

mikefocke

try reading this....

http://sites.google.com/site/mikefoc...rbatteryisdead

Davev

Did you get in?

Scott Scharton

Yay, #4 option worked, but not by using a charger. Had an old battery in the garage that apparently had enough juice to make it work. Cable to fuse, cable to door hinge and two cables to old battery in garage and it worked. Thanks for everyone's help. Now, new battery from dealer or a over the counter battery from autozone? Opinions?

DennisAN

Well....

IIRC Consumer Reports rated Walmart batteries highly. They have a 986 fitment - I checked a while back when I was in buying Mobil 1 for my car. Walnut Creek shouldn't be tough on a battery: no freezing winters or 100*+ summers.

See https://rennlist.com/forums/928-foru...nterstate.html

sjfehr

I'm using a wal-mart battery; works fine, no complaints. Same battery you're going to get from any auto parts store, but a little cheaper.

San Rensho

Now re route the manual release cable to the hole in the front bumper where you install the tow hook so the next time it takes less than 30 seconds to open the frunk.

terbiumactivated

Of course it works fine, unlike tires you can be a cheapskate in the battery department and slide. There are only a few battery makers, these private label units are most likely Exide anyway. I'm not sure if Interstate private labels but it's a good bet they do and keep it quiet lest they cannibalize their money making logo. I still have the Porsche battery but I would get a megatron when it goes. Even Kodak made a "general purpose" orthochromatic film near the end, it was straight up TMat-G in a less pretty box.

mikefocke

Note that a TIP battery has a bigger CCA battery than a manual transmission car.

sjfehr

Yeah, there are only a handful of manufacturers and conventional wisdom is that it's the exact same battery, but Wal-Mart often forces OEMs to such cost points that they either have to make changes to their product to meet them, or be forced to accept extremely low margins. I don't worry much about marque products, but unique part#s often concern me. In this case, Wal-Mart's batteries do seem to perform just as well as the others, and likely are identical models off an identical line with different stickers.

terbiumactivated

I worked for three major product manufacturers one of which did mostly private label. They don't change established manufacturing parameters, if anything, a run close to being out of spec but going out for sale anyhow might end up with the "off brand" stamp and even that really was not common.

Cuda911

Here's my thread on re-routing the emergency release cable, to avoid future problems.

https://rennlist.com/forums/996-foru...e-measure.html

As stated above, there are a very few battery manufacturers. Search the threads here... many have been very happy with non-OEM batteries.