I drove my car for the first time today in exactly a week. This wasn’t a boycott on the car — it was actually a result of my battery dying and my slacking ways of fixing it. I knew I could do it, but I knew it would be a pain and boy was it. It almost took 2 hours to get that thing in there because of some stupid nuts that you couldn’t reach without some serious stretch armstrong arms. Anyway, it’s all fixed up now and my car drives.
Changing car batteries are a pain…It takes a fair amount of effort to remove the two connectors with the leads that want to stick to the terminals. Once the battery is free of the cables and the support casing it’s a heavy block of lead to lug out. Then you have to drop the new one back into place and re-connect everything up. If you’re lucky the new one is charged otherwise, you gotta hook it up to the charger or get a boost and then it’s the job of the alternator to keep it topped up with juice. Finally you have the chore of disposing of the old one. I have changed batteries on car and farm tractors and the tractor battery was always the easiest to change.
Yeah, well… compared to rebuilding my engine it was a snap. But still, a pain. And you’re right, I think the hardest part is actually picking that old battery up out of there. My new battery must have weighed at least 25 lbs!
I guess you saved some cash on gas but I think the VW is still pretty good on mpg.
Engine re-building…Wow. I’ve done a couple of brake jobs, replaced bearings, and done a head gasket replacement.
Just curious, what kind of car engine did you rebuild?
I rebuilt the engine in my talon in 2001 after the timing belt broke and some valves got bent. You can see pictures of it engine here.