Battery maintenance

[Guest]

Re: Battery maintenance

All I can say is to each his own. Come up to Canada in the winter and you will know why our cars have battery chargers. Actually, I was just looking for advice on the Odyssey battery.

The one great thing about our horrid Canadian winters is that when Spring comes around, I am pumped to get the TBird out of the nest. It's like having a new car each and every year, without actually changing cars.

My Escape is a mighty winter machine, so I make the most of it during the dark times (-30 Celisius tonight, so the wood stove is filled).

[bottomtime]

Re: Battery maintenance

Hi all! Yes, bought the Battery Tender Plus, a couple of months back, and just hooked it up today. Used the attachment that bolts on to the battery posts. It has two LED's: a red and a green. The red solid one went on at first, indicating fallen voltage, and when up to par, the solid green will turn on, then then the BT will be on standby. Well, so far so good. It's a great little unit. Also bought the 25' extension and the little carrying case.

--Lindy

To clarify what the lights (red & green) are doing, when the red LED light is on steady, that means the battery is below, or less than, 80% full charge. Next, you will see both the red & green lights blinking at the same time, which means that the battery has recharged itself to more that 80%, but not fully charged yet at that point, and is capable of starting the car at that point. Lastly, when the green light is on steady, by itself, the battery has reached full charge. At that time, full steady green by itself, the charger has gone into a "float" mode and is not charging the battery anymore, which is what you want, as such. However, when the battery starts slowly discharging itself over time, and falls below 80% charge, the red light will come on again, indicating it has starting charging again, and the sequence starts all over again.

[rpatton3]

Re: Battery maintenance

I was gonna get a hard-wired Harbor battery charger with the 110 plug in for another vehicle but I was thinking about a cigarette lighter slow charger.

Does anyone know if there is such a thing?

By the way, the Optima battery people sent me a response in a different thread not to use their battery in a Thunderbird.


Thanks,

[Icebluebird]

Re: Battery maintenance

ODYSSEY battery says yes for the Birds.

OPTIMA battery says no for the Birds.

I think that the ODYSSEY is about $300 or so with a 10 year guarantee and it does not need a vent.

[Guest]

Re: Battery maintenance

Thanks for the advice Dean. Exactly what I was looking for.

Cheers...Mark

[Santini]

Re: Battery maintenance

Bought 03 Bird used two years ago. Pretty sure it still has the orig. factory battery.l Seems to be strong. No hesitation when starting engine. When day comes, will definitely check out Odyssey. Until then, will continue to extend its life via the maintainer.
Thanks for the info. re. Odyssey.
Santini

[darsinewman]

Re: Battery maintenance

Word of caution: The threads of the positive terminal bolt must be slightly off because it is somewhat difficult to remove the small nut that holds the main positive battery terminal on to the battery. What I wanted to do (and which I eventually did once I figured it out) was avoid removing this nut and just attach my wire via an eye hook which I crimped on to the wire, to the remaining exposed bolt with another nut. Just couldn't find a nut that would screw on without giving me that feeling I was cross threading something. Once I discovered that Ford had apparently made the threads slightly off so that the original equip. nut mentioned above would not come loose on its own yada, yada. However, make sure you do get a nut that is correctly threaded for that bolt.

I bought a Battery Tender for my Bird and was attempting to hook up the ring fasteners (as opposed to the alligator clips). I got the terminal bolt out, but the threads on the end of the bolt are stripped or cross-threaded or something so that it is impossible to get a nut back on it. I've looked about a million different places (including local junkyards) for a similar bolt with no luck. Of course Ford sells them...but only as part of the complete battery cable assembly, which is $100/ea. Any ideas?

[007Cruiser]

Re: Battery maintenance

Darsi....there are tools for repairing the threads of bolts. Check out some repair or machine shops in your area.

[MATBird]

Re: Battery maintenance

Darsi, Those bolts may be metric thread. Suggestion, take that terminal bolt w/nut to a local autoparts store and maybe they can help you. If not a replacement of the same, they may be able to get a close replacement for you.

[Ediron]

Re: Battery maintenance

Once you find the thread size weather it's metric or us you can buy a die nut and clean the threads or use a file and just file the threads .Did it plenty of time on jobs.

[darsinewman]

Re: Battery maintenance

Thanks for all the suggestions. I've taken the bolt to several places with no luck. I do know that they are 10-32 fine thread and that apparently no auto parts store has ever seen a battery terminal bolt that small. Guess I'll just have to try to fix the threads. Fun, fun, fun!

[Ediron]

Re: Battery maintenance

A 10-32 is a common nut and bolt.Go to an ACE hardware store if you have one near buy.They usually have an excellent supply of nuts and bolts.Your local Home Depot also.

[Lindy]

Re: Battery maintenance

Hello to all,

Just stripped two battery cable bolts, and they are badly damaged. Has any one yet come up with a source for a set of these? Or maybe I could take leave of my senses and buy the new cable set. That still leaves me with the problem of how to properly remove the nuts from the special carriage bolts.

--Lindy

[Leroy]

Re: Battery maintenance

My advice is get it fixed professionally and be done with it, it's not something you want to just get rigged to work for now. Leroy

[MATBird]

Re: Battery maintenance

According to Motorcraft website, these are the part numbers:

2002-2005 (before 1-10-05) Battery to ground cable WC95703

2005 after 1-10-05.............Battery to ground cable WC95952

2002-2005........................Junction to starter cable WC95702

Saves you looking it up:)