[T3] Cold Battery

[J. Jonik]

After a night on low charge, the battery worked fine.  Car started on first try...but with a cloud of exhaust smoke for a few moments...and then all was well.  What would that smoke mean?  Anything related to starting problems?

Questions remain: 
 Why did battery test ok in all 6 cells before charging, yet not work?Does that indicate something wrong with the battery even though it's not that old?
Or....could it just have been the connections?...which weren't crudded up or anything. Pretty clean, actually.
Another thing: horn beeps when hitting little bumps while turning left. Ground wire in steering wheel is disconnected pending replacement of  plastic cover (which won't stay attached to the wheel).  Don't (yet) have a clue where a faulty wire may be.   Could the horn be trying to work when car's turned off and parked thus draining battery?  How to know that nothing is secretly ON when car is off, parked, and left for days?  No, it wasn't radio.  

The old story---something got "fixed", but I don't know how or what.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: "Dave Hall" <dave at hallvw.clara.co.uk>
To: <type3 at vwtype3.org>
Subject: Re: [T3] Cold Battery
Message-ID: <297D5B4E063B4E989E67AFCF0DDCF077 at DavidPC>
Content-Type: text/plain;    charset="iso-8859-1"

Most likely just discharged battery, but could be corrosion (?salt) working
its magic on the wires to the starter motor maybe?  

I had a VW Bus which one morning on the way to school simply stopped a few
hundred yards short.  As a teacher, some mornings I didn't want to go to
school, but I didn't think the bus felt the same!

Starter absolutely dead.  AA(A) called and the main starter wire terminal
from the battery had corroded off the wire.  The night before, I'd driven
over  a few hundred yards of slurry-coated road from a leaking farm tanker,
which had eaten through the terminal. Sounds unlikely, but it happened, and
boy, was I glad the repair man had the job of soldering the new terminal on,
and not me!

When they drove a Beetle across the Irish sea, it stopped after some hours
due to the salt-water running down the battery.  Maybe the snow/salt
cocktail packed under the car was draining the battery.

Dave
UK VW Type 3&4 Club
===================


-----Original Message-----
From: type3-vwtype3.org [mailto:type3-vwtype3.org-bounces at lists.vwtype3.org]
On Behalf Of J. Jonik
Sent: 28 January 2016 01:49
To: type3 at vwtype3.org
Subject: [T3] Cold Battery

71 FI Standard sat for days under snow and started on first try.? But then,
about 3 days later, still sitting...not having been driven yet...it almost
started on first try...then didn't go...then got weaker and weaker, with
just groans.? Let it sit a bit...tried again...groans got weaker and
weaker.?? Lights looked ok....but it seemed that the battery (not even a
year old) wasn't helping.
Checked the battery,?? All cells were up there in the top of good area.? But
I put it on a charger anyhow.
What if, after a charge, in a nice warm house, starts the car just fine
tomorrow?? What would that mean?

So...what to suspect as culprit here?? It wasn't THAT cold (just in mid 20
degrees at night...up to 40s in day).
Starter-solenoid?Bad battery?Bad connections?Plugs? (though recently
cleaned)

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