What my car and my nose have in common

[sylvar]

They're running.

The guy who came to jump-start the car swears that the red pools of blech surrounding each terminal are perfectly normal corrosion. On a brand-new battery. He also says that the little overhead light is capable of draining the battery in an hour.

Further, he says that I should let the car run with the lights and the heat on, because this will cause the battery to charge faster. (His rationale is that it will force the alternator to spin constantly.) If the alternator produces more electric power than these devices need, I suppose it could be the case. But I'd guess that headlights alone would make it keep spinning, and the heat is just slowing the charge.

Ah well. I'm going to take the car to the garage as soon as tregoweth returns so he can tail me and give me a ride back. I'll let Olin Mott's techs give me the straight dope. Maybe I just got a defective battery. Maybe there's an underlying problem.

And maybe AAA should have gotten someone out here within an hour like they promised, and not 1h50m after my call. But that's the contractor's fault, not theirs.

Comments

[h-postmortemus.livejournal.com]

The guy who jump started your car was full of shit. Whether he was deliberately misleading you or just trying to pretend he knows more than he does I can not say.

a) Battery corrosion rarely looks like rust and often looks white, gray or green. And usually powdery

b) Best way to charge a battery is to drive the car around normally, preferably at a steady clip. Say, drive around the Interstate for 5 miles.

c) if your alternator is dead or dying, no amount of load will help it charge the battery

(And yes, a bad alternator can fuck a new battery)