This summer, my family and I went on our annual summer vacation to take in some new sights and most importantly, spend time with family that live out of state and country. Last year, the highlight of our summer vacation was a Mediterranean cruise (Barcelona to Rome on Enchanted Princess). This year, we were scheduled to sail Sun Princess between Athens and Barcelona but the day before our flight from L.A., my daughter and I came down with hand, foot and mouth disease.
Two years ago, I wrote how we returned from our 49-day trip and the battery inside my 2019 Lincoln Nautilus was dead. I asked my neighbor, who is always working in his garage on his cars and motorcycles, if he had any idea how I could quickly jump it because I was in a hurry.
He said he could jump it. I asked if he had super long jumper cables and he said, “Nope!”
“Then how?” I asked. “There’s no room to bring another car into the garage.”
“You’ll see!” he said, and he ran home. He returned with a little pouch and inside was a device about the size of a mini cable box with two short leashed jumper clamps. It was a Halo, a power bank that includes enough power to jump start a car, truck, boat, motorcycle or lawn mower. “This should do it,” he said, as he popped the red clamp on the positive terminal and the black clamp on the negative. He pressed a button on the device and voila! The car lit up. I pressed start and I was good to go for a little while but eventually needed to get a new battery.
Last summer, the same thing happened when we went away for just a month. I didn’t think the battery would die but sure enough, it did. The portable jump starter is great short-term but when the car battery is not used for so long, it dies and I need to replace it, which is a few hundred dollars.
I didn’t want to spend the money or time getting a new one so I asked my handy, mechanically-inclined neighbor if he could either drive my car once a week or help me remove the battery before we left, to save it from draining. He said, “Actually, you can borrow my automatic battery maintainer.”
It was small like the portable jump starter. “You sure it’s going to work?” I asked, not sure that it would. He looked at me like I was from Mars. I popped the hood, he put the two cables on (one on negative and the other positive) and plugged it in (or vice versa – I can’t remember). Sure enough, when we returned home after a month away from home, the car worked like I’d never stopped driving it, which was a huge relief and saved me hundreds of dollars.
So, if you are going away for a few weeks and don’t want to risk ruining your car battery, I highly recommend an automatic battery maintainer since it costs less than $30.
KEEP READING
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–Travel hack: How to use your wireless headphones to watch in-flight movies
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My husband has done this for years with the various sports cars he has owned after he had a battery die from not driving one of his first sports cars. He parks his “baby” in our one car garage and rarely drives it, and it never goes out during the NY winters, so he keeps it on a battery tender all year long. He got one called Battery Tender with their extender cable so it could reach the outlet on the wall. Works like a charm.
As for our SUV which sits outside in the driveway (since it’s just an ordinary car…..), when we take an extended trip, we just have our neighbor start it up once a week and run it for a bit.
Save yourself some cash and just disconnect the battery terminals from your battery. Leaving them connected and draining the battery isn’t good for its health.