Batteries? We don’t need no stinking batteries (Post #299) 8/22/2012

This weekend was mostly unpleasant in the Honda side of the stable. We had not one, but two batteries fail in our Honda cars.

I mentioned to my wife while we were on our 3800 mile trek of a vacation, that the battery in the 2007 Honda CRV would need to be replaced. I had a morning in Montana when I started the engine that it gave that, slow rev sound when starting. We were lucky to make it home without swapping it out.

But that was not to be this past Saturday morning. I was making breakfast, and as it turned out we were out of eggs. My son, Diet Mountain Drew called and told us the Driver’s Education place doesn’t take checks, cash or money order only. So Mrs. OkieRover jumped in the CRV and drove cross-town to pay for the defensive drivers course.

On her way home she stopped at Braum’s to pick up eggs. About the time I had decided, Mrs. OkieRover wasn’t going to come home…ever. She called and told me the CRV would not start. So I ate my plate of hashbrowns, no eggs, and went to get her.

We jumped the CRV and drove home. I grabbed an 8mm deep socket and headed to O’Reily’s to get a new battery. I bought the last one, they had. (This is important for the second half of the story so try to keep up.) I installed it right there in the parking lot. This saved me having a core charge and the hassle of having it reversed on my ATM card.

So a few hours later I have a call from Diet Mountain Drew, and as you may have guessed, the Civic would not start. My eldest daughter was en-route to him, but instead he got a jump from his friend Justin.

So I now had another battery dead. I had to go to the grocery to buy sandwich fixin’s for my newly found biologically related OLDER brother (more on this later) and family to come over for a visit. When I came home I jumped the Civic and drove it to O’Reilly’s. As it turned out…they didn’t have any more batteries for that model. Someone had bought the last one. (rolls eyes, heavy sigh)

I was told there was one on the south side of Norman so I drove down there to buy it. I didn’t bring any tools. If HAD remembered, the 8mm deep socket would have been WRONG! They started using 10mm sockets on the 2008 models.

The kid at O’Reily’s opened a drawer full of sockets and said that’s what we got. What they didn’t have in the drawer was a 10mm deep well socket or a 10mm wrench. They had an 11mm wrench but no 10mm. I wound up buying a set of pliers. I swapped it out and was done.

The two batteries were OEM original equipment delivered with the cars. That puts the CRV at 5-6 years old considering the manufacturer date and the Civic’s at 4-5 years. For a battery in Oklahoma with 120 degree summers and 8 degree winters, not too bad.

I didn’t need the 100$(US) each hickey for the budget but what else are you going to do? Ever push started an automatic? Yeah, me neither.

PS. We swapped a third battery in my eldest daughter’s Ford Explorer. It died on Monday while she was in line to pick up my grand daughter from school. We had a time of it swapping it out. The negative battery connector was too stretched out. We had to cut off the bolt for it had rusted and corroded. Nothing more exciting than generating a lot of sparks with a cutting wheel over a battery. It says expressly to avoid sparks near the battery. So a nice volume of sparks is always entertaining.

Batteries? We don’t need no stinking batteries. 

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.