Well, that was a lot harder than it needed to be

[dreamshark]

Thanks a lot, Honda, for protecting my battery with this impossible-to-remove terminal cover. I finally pried the damn thing off, which was kind of hard on the plastic cover. But I think it came with the battery, which is clearly toast, so who cares? Now that it's off I can see the hard plastic clips that you are supposed to depress simultaneously on both sides of the battery cover to release it, but now it's kind of too late, right?


Once that was out of the way, I just clamped the little charger on the terminals and all of the dashboard lights came on and the door beeper started complaining that there was a key in the ignition. One turn of the key and the car came alive. Amazingly, considering how dead the battery had seemed, it had not lost the clock settings. I let it run for 20 minutes, but I don't know if it will take a lasting charge. Either way, it should start once. And after that, if necessary, I can restart it easily with the little jump starter. 

Can anybody recommend a drive-in battery store? 

Comments

[carbonel]

If you have AAA, they will deliver a battery to you and install it. I'm not sure if that's true if you don't have a membership, but it might, since you're giving them money for the battery.

I compared prices, and it was maybe a $10 surcharge, maybe not even that.

[dreamshark]

I don't have AAA. I did the obvious thing and called Ellwood's, my friendly local garage down on 40th and Nicollet. They didn't have the right battery of course, but were able to obtain one overnight. So today I jumped the battery again (unsurprisingly, it had not held a charge from the first jump start two days before) and drove it down there. Later today I will walk down and get it. It might cost a few bucks more from a small garage, but it's certainly the easiest option and helps keep a small business going.

[carbonel]

The closest thing I have to a friendly local garage is Bobby and Steve's at 58th and Nicollet, which is a chain, but I don't know how extensive. I used to have a great mechanic near me, even if he was with $EVILLARGECOMPANY (BP), but he moved on.

I started going to Bobby and Steve's several years ago when my car started making a terrible noise when I was driving and I was right near them. They have done pretty well by me over the years.

[quadong]

I wonder if the engineers who designed the plastic cover are from a warmer climate. I remember trying to pry off a piece of my dashboard, long ago, to change a light bulb, and finding it essentially impossible at 20F, but easy peasy later when it was above freezing.

[dreamshark]

Could be. It's a Honda, which suggests warm-climate engineers. But who knows? We used to have a Volvo that had a design defect that caused keys to break off in the ignition when the temperature was below zero. This happened so regularly that I had multiple extra keys and carried a piece of wire in the glove compartment for prying the broken key out. And Volvo is from SWEDEN.