Cars and Fish

03/​12 Fish Fry Ker­fuffle

If you're fa­miliar with the Chris­tian ob­ser­va­tion of Lent— meat is for­bidden on Fri­days. As a re­sult, a lot of churches host Friday-night fish fry din­ners, and I had been leaving to pick up my bat­tered cod dinner.

Someone showed me an in­teract fish fry map that'd been coded by Code for Pitts­burgh. Side note: Code for Pitts­burgh looks like a re­ally cool gang of like-minded coders, and they've built some neat stuff to­gether.

Using the map, I picked out a church in nearby Shady­side. We pre-or­dered two fried fish sand­wiches for pickup at 5:45pm. Nat­u­rally, I was late, rushing to the car at 5:50pm, I rolled (it's low) into the front seat and slammed the doors. I could see the tartar sauce in my mind's eye ...

Then I turned the key ... nothing. Far too many of us have been in the same gut-wrenching sit­u­a­tion. If you're less un­lucky, you might still hear a click— or see the flash of a dash icon.

The stakes were still pretty low. I've been working re­motely since Sep­tember 2020. So, I'm blessed that I wasn't re­lying on the car to get to my job. In the grand scheme of things (WFH, pan­demic, in the garage, on a Friday), this was prob­ably the best-case sce­nario for a dead bat­tery.

Jump-Starting a Dead Bat­tery

My neighbor hap­pened to be pulling into the dri­veway next door. So, in des­per­a­tion, I hur­riedly asked if I could get a jump. If you're like me and al­ways forget the con­nec­tion steps, enjoy this beau­tiful il­lus­tra­tion by yours truly:

Ap­par­ently, you can also go from the run­ning car's frame (#3), and con­nect (#4) to the dead bat­tery's neg­a­tive post. How­ever, the above order is what I've most com­monly seen (you're wel­come fu­ture, stranded self).

We hooked up the ca­bles. To my un­der­standing, the al­ter­nator spins faster when you rev the en­gine— and, con­se­quently, out­puts a higher am­perage. So, holding the pedal at about 2000 RPM might be pro­duc­tive— es­pe­cially for bigger en­gines.

This should put out be­tween 14V and 15V from an idling ve­hicle. If you mea­sure less than 13V across the bat­tery's posts while the car is run­ning, then it's more likely you have an issue with your al­ter­nator (which charges the bat­tery).

We must have let his car rev for at least 5 min­utes without a click, blink or whisper from our Camry. In a last ditch, I tried biting into the bat­tery's ter­mi­nals using the jumper ca­ble's copper al­li­gator-teeth— still nothing. I thanked my neighbor for trying, but it seemed toasted— kaput.

Alas, it was not our des­tiny to taste the but­tery, fishy flavor that night.

03/​13 Camry De­bug­ging

To recap: Fish Friday. Yet no tangy-sweet tartar sauce.

My fi­ancée and I ac­tu­ally at­tempted (after some rapid de­lib­er­a­tion) to bi­cycle across Pitts­burgh's East End to the church.

Un­for­tu­nately, the hills of Pitts­burgh are un­for­giving to flat-land Illi­noisers like my­self. We also re­al­ized, after about a half-mile of biking, that the kitchen would def­i­nitely be closed by the time we would ar­rive.

I called the church, and they kindly said they'd comp the din­ners we'd or­dered for the next Friday. Without any pressing ap­point­ments or plans for the weekend, I made it pri­ority one to get the car run­ning— and to get those bat­tered cods in one week's time.

Under the Hood

Sat­urday was an un­sea­son­ably beau­tiful day for March in Pitts­burgh; so, I opened the garage door and ducked under the hood of the Camry. The first thing that stood out was the cor­ro­sion all over the bat­tery's posts. It was heckin crusty and gross. 👇

That white (or bluish-green) pow­dery stuff is ap­par­ently ei­ther lead sul­fate or an­hy­drous copper sul­fate. As this cor­ro­sion builds up, so does the bat­tery's re­sis­tance. No good.

I dug through the mantle of powder with the mul­ti­meter probes to find that the bat­tery was re­porting a mere 1.79V. That's close to 10% of the bat­tery's full ca­pacity.

That nasty busi­ness is lead sul­fate or an­hy­drous copper sul­fate. Hy­drating an­hy­drous copper sul­fate gives it the green or blue tinge. This NOCO blog post was a great re­source for un­der­standing bat­tery main­te­nance and safety— plus I re­ally liked the graphics.

Since the jump didn't work and the bat­tery was reading an in­cred­ibly low voltage, my con­clu­sion was that it needed to be re­placed.

It's super easy to get the bat­tery out. Doing this job on a Camry, a 10mm socket (I rec­om­mend a little box-end too for the ter­minal clamps) is prob­ably the only tool you re­ally need.

I rec­om­mend loos­ening the nut on each bat­tery ter­minal clamp be­fore the bolt tying this bracket to the frame. I made the mis­take of taking off the bracket first and it was a pain to break the cor­roded nuts loose on the ter­mi­nals with the bat­tery loosy-goosy.

Once you get the front bolt out, there's a hooked ten­sion-rod on the back that will need to drop down. Then you can pretty easily re­move the bracket en­tirely. If you do it this way, you might be able to avoid dealing with the ten­sioning bolt at he other end of the bracket (see the image below).

Re­ally only 2 nuts and 1 bolt to get the bat­tery out. Both the ter­minal clamp nuts and the bolt tying the bat­tery bracket to the front of the car frame use a 10mm socket.

With the bat­tery fi­nally out, I looked around the out­side to find a long string of let­ters and num­bers that had been heat-stamped into the plastic:

The first letter refers to the month it was man­u­fac­tured: A-L refers to Jan­uary – De­cember. The number refers to the year in which the bat­tery was made. For ex­ample: 2 would be 2012, 3 would be 2013, 4 would be 2014, etc. The last letter refers to the plant in which the bat­tery was made.¹

My Toyota-man­u­fac­tured bat­tery had the number "8". Since the av­erage lifespan of a normal car bat­tery is be­tween 2-5 years, it was most likely man­u­fac­tured in 2018.² R.I.P. bat­tery, I promise to take better care of the next one.

Costco Mem­ber­ship

There are a couple stores (Au­to­Zone, Ad­vance Auto Parts, O' Reilly Auto Parts, Fire­stone, etc.) that will ap­par­ently test your bat­tery for free. If you have a spare, it might be good to clean up the dead bat­tery and take it over to them. You could find out if your bat­tery is def­i­nitely shot or if the problem might lie else­where.

I was eager to get this fixed, so I went ahead and de­cided to pur­chase a new bat­tery. Like any product, there are good and bad man­u­fac­turers. It can be helpful to read re­views and make sure you're get­ting your mon­ey's worth.

The only two things that are re­ally im­por­tant in pur­chasing a new bat­tery are the bat­tery "group" and the cold-cranking amps (CCA). The 2010 Camry uses group 24F, and the CCA needs to meet or ex­ceed 582 (the CCA on the orig­inal, Toyota-man­u­fac­tured bat­tery). A quick cost-com­par­ison among some of the nearby stores yielded these re­sults:

The cheapest op­tions by far were Costco, Wal­mart, and Home Depot. The "core" charge was a new con­cept to me (someone who has done little to no car re­pair); but it's im­por­tant to note:

Cer­tain types of auto parts can be re­cy­cled or, more specif­i­cally, re­man­u­fac­tured for fu­ture sale. These parts have a core price that is used as a form of de­posit on the por­tion of the part that can be re­man­u­fac­tured and that is de­signed to en­courage re­turn of the old part. The "core", simply put, is your old part. Re­turning cores can save you money on re­place­ment parts.³

Wal­mart didn't seem to ad­ver­tise their core charge; re­gard­less, I somehow con­vinced my­self that the $60 Costco mem­ber­ship might be worth the $10 of sav­ings for a Costco bat­tery...

A gen­erous friend gave me a ride to a nearby ware­house. This was my first time within 100 feet of a Costco, and that de­serves its own story... but I'll stay on topic.

The sales rep rec­om­mended the ($120) "Gold Star Ex­ec­u­tive" mem­ber­ship and de­scribed the rea­sons why that was the way to go. There was vis­ible dis­ap­point­ment when I re­vealed that I had knowl­edge of the $60 op­tion.

After some very un­com­fort­able back-and-forth, I signed my soul away and got my pic­ture printed on the plastic ad­mis­sion to the cap­i­talist ware­house of won­ders (in bulk). We got back and plopped in the new bat­tery. I hooked the ten­sion rod back be­hind and tight­ened down the front of the bracket to the frame. There were a few ar­ti­cles on­line that rec­om­mended a mix­ture of baking soda and water for cleaning up the cor­ro­sion.

I soaked the ter­minal clamps, then brushed off the re­maining cor­ro­sion with a stiff-wired brush. The same ar­ti­cles rec­om­mended using di­elec­tric grease to pre­vent cor­ro­sion on the bat­tery posts. I didn't have that readily avail­able; but ap­par­ently pe­tro­leum jelly can be used as a sub­sti­tute.⁴

The neg­a­tive post gave a sat­is­fying pop when I touched it back to­gether— that's just an eager arc of elec­tricity from com­pleting the cir­cuit to all the car's elec­tronics. This time, when I turned the key, I could heard the fa­miliar chunk-chunk of the starter be­fore the en­gine revved to life. Suc­cess!

3/​19 Charge Your New Bat­tery

One week later, I was swim­ming in con­fi­dence and ex­cite­ment. I had com­pleted an­other suc­cessful home auto re­pair that had un­doubt­edly saved me hun­dreds of dol­lars in gen­uine Toyota parts, labor and B.S.

We were once again ready for de­li­cious, holy fried fish. It was al­ready paid for during the prior week's bat­tery de­bacle. I rolled into the front seat, turned the key... and once again, the fa­miliar fading dash lights of a dead bat­tery.

This time, we had the time and for­ti­tude to battle the hills of Pitts­burgh. We biked to the church and got our fish sand­wiches. It was worth the trip, but it was still a bit­ter­sweet meal knowing that our bat­tery woes were to be con­tinued...

The next day, I had my neighbor help me jump the car again. Thanks be to Zeus— god of elec­tricity, it started. I swear, Nick, I won't ask you for an­other jump start for the rest of my life.

For real. As soon as we got it started, I drove to the nearest (ac­tu­ally, not the even the nearest) Wal­mart and bought a 120V plug-in charger.

We kept the car run­ning for an­other hour or so, just to make sure the bat­tery was get­ting topped-off.

Testing for Par­a­sitic Draw

Over the course of the next week, I took mea­sure­ments across the bat­tery posts. If the issue had been a par­a­sitic drain— some short along the cir­cuit that was pulling charge off the bat­tery; then I might have had a real problem.

Mea­suring across the ter­mi­nals while the car was run­ning showed over 14V, con­firming that the al­ter­nator was doing its job. After shut-off, the bat­tery mea­sured 12.79V (good). Over the course of a day, the bat­tery dropped to about 12.5V. This seemed con­cerning at first, but then the voltage set­tled at about 12.47V and held.

It was a pain in the butt; but I tested the elec­trical system for par­a­sitic draw . I opened up the fuse com­part­ments (there are ac­tu­ally two) on our 2010 Camry.

One is con­ve­niently lo­cated under the hood (near the dri­ver's side), and the other is un­be­liev­ably stupid-silly to get to— just be­hind the "kick-panel" trim (that plastic guard just under the steering wheel).

I wish someone had told me to re­ally, truly ex­haust every pos­sible op­tion be­fore wasting your time hunting for par­a­sitic draw.

To find the source of a par­a­sitic drain on your bat­tery, you es­sen­tially need to probe across every fuse until you find a cir­cuit drawing power. From there, you'd get a ball­park of where to keep looking.

Ad­di­tion­ally, to test for par­a­sitic draw cor­rectly, you should re­ally have a charged bat­tery. If you have a charged bat­tery, then you can test voltage drop over time.

If the voltage drops quickly over the course of few hours (or drops below 12V) then you might have a reason to sus­pect par­a­sitic draw. I def­i­nitely rec­om­mend watching this video by Hum­ble­Me­chanic cov­ering par­a­sitic draw and how to test for it.

Car Re­pair Lessons Learned

About a month later now, and time to re­flect. At the end of it all, I think it could have been that the new bat­tery just hadn't reached a full charged.

It had sat for a week in a cold garage. You can't blame me— I'm WFH and we're still in a pan­demic.

My best guess is that the small charge it re­ceived in the post-swap jaunt to the gro­cery store (one week prior) wasn't enough to keep it alive. I'm also con­vinced that one of the cheap USB don­gles I bought at a gas sta­tion was jacked up (pun un­in­tended).

Fin­gers crossed it was a glitch and the new bat­tery will last at least an­other 3 years. At any rate, we now have an emer­gency charger for fu­ture Fish Fry Fri­days.