The Life of a Battery

Back in December, our car had issues with starting, which is kind of an important thing for a car to be able to do. We knew it needed a new battery, but Aaron and his dad didn't want to buy a regular, old, boring battery at Costco. They wanted to put super-capacitors into the car, Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor style. So we tried not to have to drive anywhere, jumped our car when we did (Thanks Kathleen and Charlotte and the Lewises!) and made it to Christmas time when Aaron and his Dad fixed our car in 9 degree weather.

So we now had super-capacitors. It was exciting. And the car worked...for three weeks. Then it was back to the jumping business which, let's all admit, is no way to live. Back up at Dad Dennis's, he and Aaron realized that the super capacitors weren't hooked up to a good spot. It looked like metal, but it was actually covered in paint, so it wasn't conducting the electricity well enough. So they fixed that. A running car! Hooray!

The last week of January I took our car to the mechanic for safety and emissions. Time to renew! He said, "You passed emissions. But you need to get a 'real' battery." He didn't like how the capacitors and nickel hydride batteries (which we'd put in place of the lead acid battery) were just sitting in there without being bolted down. And the leads weren't connected to anything. He said the word "FIRE." At this point, I may have complained to Aaron a little bit, but he remained undeterred. 

We went to Sears--a little family trip--in order to find materials with which to make a box that would hold our nickel hydride batteries and the super capacitors. There wasn't anything good at Sears so we came back out, got in our car, turned the key, and...nothing. The car did not start. 

We were disappointed but not surprised.

Aaron pulled out the battery brick that Heather and Jason had lent us. Didn't work. He got the volt meter. The batteries were fully charged. He tried everything he could think of. Some people pulled up next to us. They were filling up their own flat tire and asked if we needed help. We tried to jump our car using their car. At this point, was there any chance that was going to work? No.

The mom gave us snacks out of their car and took several of their children inside Sears so the dad could give us a ride home. There are some good people in this world! They were in town from St. George for the temple open house. Temples bless people!

So now our car was stuck in the parking lot of Sears. At this point, Aaron strongly suspected it was the starter motor that was the problem. The next evening, we used Aunt Kathleen's car (Thanks!) to get to Sears. Annie and Scotty watched netflix on the phone while Aaron and I absolutely froze trying to figure out how to get the starter motor out. I was the official flashlight holder. The starter motor remained firmly ensconced in the engine.

The next day, we rented a car.  The kids watched more netflix while we tried some more to get the starter motor out. Aaron has changed a starter motor before in our old car. But we could not, for the life of us, figure out the location of the second bolt holding the darn thing in. Over the two days, this bolt eluded us for a total of eight hours. We bought two new tools from a conveniently located Sears store to aid in our efforts. I laid under the car and felt around in the greasy engine for something, anything to that would allow us to remove the motor. You can see how desperate we were. All of our efforts were for naught. 

We towed the car to the conveniently located Sears Auto Center. By this point, we didn't care about the money. We were ready to hand our problem off. When we came back the next day to pick up the car, the mechanic told us the bolt was facing in the opposite direction from the other mounting bolt. So basically we couldn't see it because we were looking for a bolt going the wrong way. 

Remember how we didn't pass the safety test? But now our car was starting again, so we went to Home Depot and got corrugated plastic, a sheet of foam, a sheet of clear plastic, some bolts, and two small copper thingies. Many, many hot glue sticks later, Aaron had made this:

And we passed safety.