MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - Re: Car Battery's Suck!!!!!

I know italie's covered all points pretty well, but anyway...

> > the good spark which means that the cars are connected.
>
> Wha...? If you're connecting the batteries properly, you shouldn't see sparks at all.

Depends on the condition of the battery in the dead car. If it's just discharged enough not to start, but not completely dead you probably won’t see sparks. If it's very deeply discharged, or has developed an internal short, there's a very good chance you'll see sparks.

> > With everything hooked up, my
> > buddy turned the key to his car and nothing. The battery must be completely dead.
>
> Even with a 100% dead battery, you should have gotten *something*. Either the battery
> wasn't the only problem, or you didn't have something hooked up right.

This is exactly what you’d expect if the battery had developed an internal short.

> > I don't know how it happened, but as I was cleaning the positive terminal the cable
> > contacted the post on the battery while the negative terminal contacted the other
> > post. I HAVE NEVER GOTTEN A SHOCK THAT PAINFUL IN MY ENTIRE FUCKING LIFE! Holy
> shit.
> > A bunch of sparks and vulgarities went flying. It felt like someone punched my left
> > hand and arm while stabbing it at the same time. Good God car batteries have a
> > painful charge to them. We then stepped away and pulled the battery out of the bay
> > while I regained control of my left arm. Ha.
>
> Probably more evidence that the car has some kind of electrical fault..? As far as I
> know, the voltage of a car battery isn't high enough to give you a shock like that.

The GSR with dry hands is too high for the voltage to overcome, but if your hands are wet you can give yourself a shock. You can kill yourself with less voltage than a car batter delivers if you use needles the get the current into your bloodstream.

> > With the battery out, I noticed that the positive cable in the car (Honda Accord
> > 2003) was on the same side as the negative terminal of the battery. The negative
> > cable was closest to what was marked as the positive battery. The fuckers at
> AutoZone
> > gave us a battery with the positive and negative terminals opposite of what the
> dead
> > battery had.
>
> I'm confused, you couldn't just turn the battery around?

Batteries aren't symmetrical. Sucks even more if you've ordered a special high performance battery online and they sent you the wrong one, and you've paid expensive shipping on the damn thing.