Quote:
Originally Posted by getty150
Cold out in the morning yesterday in the 20s at the start since the start of this week. I attempted to start up the X, and a no go rapid fire clicks down to none, nada! This week was an experiment week for the Napa legend . Didn't charge the battery any and didn't park in the garage...out of the last 5 days. 4 year old battery was holding its own.
Proceeded to pop in the O'Reilly Super Start (it's been off the charger for a week) no luck there in starting the X.
What was the problem....
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Back in the '50-60's, my G'Dad wrapped his car battery with some pipe wrap/heating element he made in his garage, for use in winter, though I never saw the temperature staying below freezing much in those days (or now). In later years, I'd keep my car batteries unfrozen, by running the car/truck to operating temperature every 8-10 hours, to accomplish the same thing.
When I neglected checking on the state of the battery chargers in both my camping and my wife's business trailer during cold snaps, I found ruined batteries in both (2x lead-acid, and 1x AGM).
After that (around 2014, when I started using charger/maintainers religiously), I became diligent in making sure my chargers were working full-time, and I had insulating blanket material handy, if power was out (on the trailers), or I would run power from a generator to ensure battery warmth. And/or run the cars up to operating temperature, every once in awhile. It has only stayed below freezing for more than 3-4 days straight, once or twice since then).
While staying the night in the open-but-"under-building" parking garage at work, during ice storms, I observed the electric pipe wraps (similar to the one my G'Dad had made) on all the exposed pipes there.
Meanwhile, I piggy-backed off the power source, to run a heater in my '09 HHR Panel (or in earlier years, the truck caps on my '76 Chevy C-10, '81 Ford Courier, or even while sleeping in the reclined seat of my '04 Chevy 2500HD (a regular cab, so not much so), or '69 Chevy C-10 (regular cab bench seat, a bit better).
I figured that I might want to wrap my car batteries some day, but never got around to trying that.
However, if I was living in the upper, colder climes, I would look into trying that. I'm sure the electric pipe wraps would work better vs charger/maintainers in keeping a battery ready-to-start, or vs going outside in a blizzard to run the car every few hours. Automotive battery warmers are available, too, but they cost much more than electric pipe wrap does. Just an idea.