battery advice

[stayrocky]

I am worried that when one travel for a few weeks, the battery may run down in this case - what happens? Can we get into the car to at least put it on the charger? Is it best to leave it unlocked in the shed, or even on a charger? Seems like with so much electronica letting it go fully flat could be tricky/expensive/serious. Any thoughts or experiences?

[DV52]

hmm...........this is an impossibly broad question to answer - so it ain't possible to reply in an informed manner.

What Brand/Model/build-date is this car? It matters because how the vehicle responds to a dead battery is different depending on how/when the car was built! And a big determinant of how the battery behaves is what after market gadgets are installed - like dashcams

Generally - the car will have a manual method for unlocking doors (normally via physically inserting a key into a door lock) if the battery fails. But of course prevention is better than having to deal with a dead battery when you want to use the car.

My suggestion if the car is used seldom is to make-up a simple wire-loom that joins the battery terminals to a small weatherproof 2 x pin connector on the front of the car (via an in-line fuse). Care needs to be taken as to where the negative battery terminal connection is made if the car has a Start-Stop facility. The 2 x pin weatherproof connector on the loom is discretely located outside the car somewhere where it can be accessed without the need to lift the bonnet

I've made a couple of these looms - the car-owner easily plugs a trickle charger into the weatherproof connector when the car is parked in the shed. And with a bit of thinking and with the correct choice of weatherproof connector - the charger leads can also be arranged so that even if the driver forgets to unplug the weather-proof connector - no damage will occur to the loom/charger-leads!

Worth considering - IMO, of course!!

Don

[Hillbilly]

Easiest way is buy a Ctek MXS 5.0 and hook that up if you are going to be away for more than about 4 weeks. As said above it comes with wires that can be permanently hooked onto the battery

ALWAYS LOCK a later model VW even overnight or it sits there thinking "Is he going to start me up, Id better be ready" and thereby uses a small amount of power, keeping some stuff live. If its locked it says "Oh goody I can go to sleep" and shuts everything down, A decent dashcam should have an auto low voltage shutdown or be connected to a socket that shuts down when ignition is off.

On our extended holidays First time was 5 weeks and Passat reluctantly started (2yr old) next trip was 9 weeks and it was dead dead dead> (4 1/2yr old), So I bought the above charger and used that on rest of cars life. Extended wiring easily fitted as prev said and works with bonnet shut . .

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A bit dearer than Amazon but at least you can see its genuine and you can take it back if problems. Had mine for 10 years without any.