The toolkit pays off.

[vakkotaur]

Call it paranoia, or call it the experience having driven junk, or call it preparedness, but amongst the things I keep in the trunk of my car is a toolkit. It's not terribly fancy, but for just about any work I might be likely to do on a car, it's sufficient. This noon it proved useful.

After lunch I got in and turned the key. The accessories came up, as expected, and then turning further... nothing. No crank. No clunk. No whine. Just nothing. And then more silence. No accessories. No radio (not even the 2m/70cm transceiver, which bypasses the ignition switch). I checked the headlights. Also nothing. This was Not Good. There should be some charge in that battery, and where's it going?

I popped the hood and looked at the battery. Nothing looked out of place. I felt it. It was cool. That was good, there wasn't some massive short. I must've nudged a cable and... the clamp on the negative post moved. Well, that's simple. Get the crescent wrench from the trunk and tighten the clamp some, and all is well, or well enough for now. I may need to do a better job of that tonight as I was in a bit of a hurry this noon.

While this problem happened near home and getting a wrench would not have been a big deal, I didn't need to. Had I been somewhere else, I'd have had to resort to finger tightening and hoping to get by, or abusing the small pliers on my pocket knife.

I don't think the mechanic who did a significant amount of work on the car a while back had anything to do with this. While he de-energized the car, the way to do that is by removing the clamp from the positive post. I suspect when I checked on things before that I didn't re-tighten the negative clamp sufficiently and it worked loose(r) in the time since. So there's some mea culpa to offset the nicer feeling of self-reliance.

Comments

[jmaynard.livejournal.com]

Actually, removing the cable from the negative post is a standard safety precaution when working on the electrical system: if you drop a wrench across the positive post (or something connected directly to it, like, say, the starter solenoid) and ground, you won't cause a spark if the negative cable is off.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Makes sense. I was giving the benefit of the doubt to the mechanic, as I've never had any problem with him before and I had worked on that clamp myself.

[tilt-longtail.livejournal.com]

Things I ALWAYS carry in my cars.
1. SPARE TIRE WITH AIR! (and jack and tire iron)
2. tool kit
3. extra fan belt(s)
4. 1 gallon of gas.
5. jumper cables
6. (most important) FIRE EXTINGUISHER

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I'm leery of carrying gasoline in the car, other than in the normal fuel tank. My car has only a single (serpentine) belt, and that's just been replaced as normal maintenance. I don't have the fire extinguisher though that is a good idea, hopefully I could get to it in time for it to be useful.

I do have the (mini) spare and jack and such, as well as the toolkit, jumper cables, blanket, warm boots, shovel (I've used it, too - had to dig my way out of a poorly plowed intersection in Grand Forks, ND once), and some spare fluids. There is a bit more. I should probably make a list.