martin j

Washed her car this morning and decided the Honda could do with dust coming off, so turned the key and nothing, no lights at all, stuck the charger on -4amp unit- 4ish hours down the line battery showing 2.5amps on a meter but nothing on the dash, so how long till I get enough to maybe start the car or least show lights on the dash, on my own and the car is in the drive the wrong to try and boost it from another car. Was running last week on the drive whilst I tidied some of the garage junk, it ran long enough to cycle the road fans three maybe four times and it had sat for two weeks previous to that and fired up fine?

engifineer

If it is not taking charge in that long and completely died since that last run, it is likely dead for good. But, have you removed and cleaned the terminal connections? Do that first for sure before.

The main issue on this car with jumping it off from another car is that the rectifier can be damaged from the alternator trying to charge a very low battery once started. If you are doing it from another car, connect it up, start the other car and let it run 15 minutes, remove cables and try to start the car. In other words, just use the other car as a battery charger, not just to jumpstart the car.

martin j

Ta, I wondered if the battery had died completely but it is ‘only’ 3 years old and a genuine Honda, I ‘ll leave it tonight till bed time and if nothing happens remove the battery and use jump leads off the other car to ‘charge’ before trying again.

Nottm_S2

they are about 60Ah if i recall so take a while to charge, 15hrs or so

but lead acid batteries dont like going totally flat

there will be a ton of folk in this position i think

i run round like a twat swapping a ctek over 3 jalopies.. both bikes have an oxford thank feck

martin j

Realise that when the charger was coupled to the car/battery there were no interior lights coming on, so after much digging around the garage found an old no frills charger, stopped them over and yep, now power going to car, interior lights+dash coming on, will give a couple of hours and see what the battery is like then, need to sort out how to test charger output.

Chuck S

Many modern "smart" battery chargers won't charge a completely dead battery 'cuz they think there's nothing connected to the charger. I've had some luck jumpering the dead battery to a good one and hooking the charger to the bad one at the same time. After a few minutes the good battery can be removed as the charger has been tricked.

I'd charge the battery 24 hours with a 10 amp or greater capacity charger. You may be able to rescue it but starting batteries are damaged by severe discharge which results by being left in the car with the tiny, damaging over the long run, parasitic discharge from things like the remote locks and radio memory.

Genuine Honda battery? Gotta know when Honda started making batteries.

-- Chuck

With the Covid19 restrictions on travel my cars not on battery maintainers are getting a weekly charge.

martin j

OK, battery from main dealer, oe, I see your logic, I did wonder about the smart charger now that the cheap box seems to doing something.

engifineer

I believe the batteries that come in USDM Honda's are manufactured by Johnson Controls. You may check that, but I think they make a lot of OEM batteries for cars here along with many other brands.

My Scion tC came new in 2004 with a Panasonic ... which so far has been by far the best battery I have ever had in a car. Lasted 10 years through 10 MN winters. Also pretty spendy I think if you could find one. Sorry .. a bit off topic there. But point is a lot of OEM batteries are pretty high quality. The Honda/OE battery I have heard is pretty darned good for this car.

Chuck S

There are only a couple of manufacturers of automobile batteries in North America (thank the EPA) and the EU/UK is probably similar. Johnson Controls is one of them here. Don't recall ever seeing a battery with their name on it; all seem to be private labeled.

-- Chuck

martin j

First battery with the car started to fail at 8 years, hopefully this one will recover and last as long.