Dub
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I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
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Post by Dub on Sept 26, 2023 14:03:17 GMT -5
Tacklife seems to be a dead company. Too bad. I might buy another one on eBay just to have a spare. There are a lot of batteries very much like the TackLife and I imagine many of them work as well. As I scan some of the similar products I see they don’t all have the same capacity. I’d have to read all the specs and reviews before buying another product. It isn’t that they are expensive, it’s just that there are probably some that won’t be there in a pinch. The TackLife seemed to have higher power numbers that some.
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Post by epaul on Sept 26, 2023 14:07:07 GMT -5
One Chinese product from one Chinese factory will end up with at least five or six names, if not seven or eight, by the time it is marketed by various marketers on our shores. (and often these various marketers will off these identical products for a few dollars more, or less, than their same product competitors.)
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Post by epaul on Sept 26, 2023 14:24:42 GMT -5
Amazon offers close to 30 different (but very damn similar) brands of these things. There aren't 30 different Chinese factories making them. Maybe three, with all three using identical components obtained from one or two factories. And there may be one or two factories pumping them out in South Korea or India. (Specs are largely determined by the spec writer)
Diehard and few "name brands" may offer a distinct look, but they come from the same Chinese factory as the rest of them.
If it looks like duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck (or Radke doing late night Karaoke at the Legion)
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Post by dradtke on Sept 26, 2023 16:05:10 GMT -5
If it looks like duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck (or Radke doing late night Karaoke at the Legion) It was Burl Ives night. And you're the one who requested "Little White Duck." Not my fault Todd couldn't make it. And that one lady at the bar liked it, I think. No, not her, the other one.
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Post by epaul on Sept 26, 2023 18:25:25 GMT -5
About that other one... um... Todd did make it. It was his night off to... um... relax and enjoy one of his more unusual... um... proclivities.
(he really did nail "Girls Just Like to Fun". We might need to use him in that role if business doesn't pick up. With the two Dons backing him? What do you think? We can branch out into new markets.)
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Post by aquaduct on Sept 26, 2023 20:26:10 GMT -5
Dang ! After all that rigmarole, it was only the battery. I'm not used to all these new fangled flashing lights. After all, it's the latest technology that 2015 had to offer. So, the tow guy shows up. He says, "It sounds like the battery." He sticks a portable charger on it, and it fires right up. I say thanks, and dirive it to the Autotech place. I leave it running in their lot. They come out take it to a bay, and swap out a new battery. Looks like the old battery might have been the original. I could have swore I changed that. But the old battery was very old. Now it purrs like it always did. So, chalk this one up to user error. And my flawless Japanese car major repair record is still intact. Only oil, tires, batteries, and occasional brake jobs to be dealt with. In all the other older cars I've experienced over the years, a bad battery would give you a clicking solenoid sound and nothing else. This new-fangled electronic stuff started flashing all sorts of warning lights on breaks and other systems. (No "Check battery" light). I didn't think a dead battery could power all that junk. Heck, I've got jumper cables in the garage. I coulda jumped it off the CRV and taken care of this thing easily yesterday. Yesterday we were having some work done in the living room and Christal is thoroughly swamped with Fed end of year stuff until Saturday so I took the day off to tend to the dogs. Moved Christal's Jeep on to the street and then in the evening Christal went out to move her car back into the driveway. She came back in freaked out because the Jeep wouldn't start and all the lights seemed to be going wacky. I just said, "wait here" and went in the basement, grabbed the jumpers, and went out and fired it up with my truck and got it parked. She wondered how I knew. 2 reasons: 1) The truck's a 2017 and it's battery died in 2021. Christal's Jeep is a 2019 and it's now 2023. Modern batteries seem to last 4 years. Go figure. And 2) When diagnosing anything, start with butt simple and then get more complicated. Not the other way around. No matter how many lights are in the dashboard.
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Post by Village Idiot on Sept 26, 2023 21:19:10 GMT -5
Mine sat, fully charged, in a closet for over a year. When I pulled it out to use, it was still fully charged and worked like a champ. It has many uses. After the derecho in 2020 we were without power for 10 days. The TackLife ran our iPhones and iPads. Isn't' that also when you were building Frankenstein? If so, it did that too.
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Post by Dave Poor on Sept 26, 2023 22:36:17 GMT -5
Forever, it's been true that no matter how dead your battery is, just get the motor started. As long as you don't turn it off before you can replace the battery, you're OK. Is this no longer the case?
You don't need the right battery. I drove around for years on a discarded battery from a power wheelchair. It was half the physical size of my Ranger's original battery.
Really modern cars, that turn off at stoplights, can you turn off that feature? That would make driving on an inadequate battery unsafe.
Dave
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Post by Marshall on Sept 27, 2023 7:45:18 GMT -5
Yes. When the tow guy jumped me, I drove the car to the service station and left it running there, so they could move it to where ever they needed to change it out.
I don't know about the "right" battery. I imagine that could work for a while as long as it's the right voltage.
Modern cars that turn off are electric vehicles, I think. And they have PLENTY of battery. (until they don't)
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Post by billhammond on Sept 27, 2023 7:50:37 GMT -5
Modern cars that turn off are electric vehicles, I think. And they have PLENTY of battery. (until they don't) Dave was talking about piston-powered cars have stop/start mechanisms to save gas. That feature is automatically disabled when the battery gets low.
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Post by drlj on Sept 27, 2023 7:57:23 GMT -5
My car has the start/stop feature. It bothered me for a couple days but now I don’t notice it. The model that came out the year after mine has a switch so you can disable the feature if you want. I don’t know how much gas it saves but I am so used to it I don’t even notice it.
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Dub
Administrator
I'm gettin' so the past is the only thing I can remember.
Posts: 19,889
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Post by Dub on Sept 27, 2023 9:35:16 GMT -5
So, how does that work? When you stop at a light and it shuts down, does it automatically start when you press the accelerator pedal?
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Post by drlj on Sept 27, 2023 9:37:52 GMT -5
So, how does that work? When you stop at a light and it shuts down, does it automatically start when you press the accelerator pedal? It starts when you lift your foot off the brake. It’s all controlled through the brake pedal.
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Post by amanajoe on Sept 27, 2023 9:53:56 GMT -5
I have one of the menards all in one jump start, compressor, backup battery systems. It is highly effective and I recommend it.
My old Honda didn't have any external locks except for the trunk and when my battery died I couldn't get into the locked car to open the hood. I had to crawl.in through the trunk pass through! Glad to see things haven't gotten any better.
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Post by Rob Hanesworth on Sept 27, 2023 20:58:13 GMT -5
I have one of the menards all in one jump start, compressor, backup battery systems. It is highly effective and I recommend it. My old Honda didn't have any external locks except for the trunk and when my battery died I couldn't get into the locked car to open the hood. I had to crawl.in through the trunk pass through! Glad to see things haven't gotten any better. My 2017 Buick Endeavor has no obvious external locks but has a small pop off panel on the bottom of the driver's door handle and a key for it inside the key fob. It also does the turn off at stops thing. Doesn't bother me at all. I think cars that do this have both a beefed up battery and starter.
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Post by John B on Sept 28, 2023 7:53:36 GMT -5
I must admit, considering that with my first car I had to park on hills for the first two weeks until I could afford to replace the starter, the idea of a car that turns off and on at each stop caused a little anxiety. It took a while to get used to it with my first car that did that, but it's been 4 years and I haven't had any problems.
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Post by coachdoc on Sept 28, 2023 8:53:02 GMT -5
I’ve always relied on Sears for car batteries. That is no longer an option.
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