The Interstate MT-47 battery in the Bavaria decided it didn’t want to hold a charge anymore. The specific gravity of each cell was reading < 1.1. I spent an hour looking for the receipt and couldn’t find it. The battery has a 75 month warranty but I was just going to buy a new one.
Luckily, the Interstate delivery guy was at the garage when I went to pick up the battery, and he read the date code off the side of the battery which was January 2003. The dealers have a chart for pro-rating the warranty and it came out to $1.52 per month – the new battery cost me $72.96, instead of $109.
In the mean time, I had ordered a Schumacher SSC-1000A Battery Charger from Amazon for $34. It seemed like a good deal. The charger gives a percentage value of full charge and voltage when the terminals are first connected and then can charge at 2, 6 or 10 amps. There was also switching for regular Lead acid batteries, deep cycle and gel cell batteries.
While trying to adjust the positive cable from the car to the battery (ironically, so I could fit the orange positive terminal cover), I didn’t notice that the ground cable had fallen onto the negative terminal on the battery. The result was a big spark, a hole blown in the cover of a relay box and a melted socket wrench extension.