Assaulting Batteries

My paternal grandfather was a cabinet maker and my father was a pioneer in the air-conditioning business, which meant he had to be an expert on plumbing and wiring and general trouble-shooting procedures, among other things. 

I grew up in an atmosphere where, if something needed doing, we did it ourselves – that meant everything from castrating calves to digging a pond to baking a cake from scratch or building a house from the bottom up.Because of that upbringing, it has been a matter of almost too much pride that I have never paid for a service call on any appliance we own. 

That nearly came to a halt yesterday.

After Hurricane Rita, I installed a 13 kW generator on our home.  It has served us well since then, without a hiccup until this past weekend.  The unit has a built-in trickle charger to keep the starter battery charged, and once a week it is programmed to start automatically and “exercise”  the generator for 12 minutes. 

Sunday morning at the appointed time it failed to start.  The starter bumped – turned the engine over for less than a second – then waited a few seconds and tried again.  It never turned the motor over enough to fire it up. 

I immediately thought that the battery was bad, but I found that if I held down the manual start switch, it fired right up.  That threw me for a loop! A check of manuals, and calls to the manufacturer and a local dealer offered no logical explanation and in spite of the $170.00 minimum charge, I finally scheduled a service call.

At that point, just to be sure, I pulled the battery out of my 97 Toyota Avalon and installed it in the generator.  HALLELUJAH, it solved the problem – no need to break my record after all!

Well, that’s the good news.  The really good news was that the battery still qualified for a free replacement under warranty from Wal-Mart.

The bad news is that when I reinstalled the battery in the Toyota, it set off the anti-theft system.  Lights flashing, horn honking and I couldn’t get the damn thing to reset.  The owner’s manual offered little help – none of which worked.  I called my daughter who gave me the car, who called her husband, who called me back.  Neither could remember how to turn it off, and Gene pointed out that they had bought the car used and he didn’t even know if the anti-theft system was original equipment.

Finally, while searching the glove box, I came across a spare battery for the car key.  I replaced the old battery in the key and was able to use the buttons on the key to get the system to reset.

While all of that honking and flashing is going on, the starter is disabled.  Once I finally got it to reset, I found that the battery was so weak that it would only cause the starter solenoid to chatter.  After an hour on the charger, it was no better, so I tried the new Wal-Mart battery in the car and it fired right up.

Today I cancel the service call with Generac, and go buy another battery.