June 11th - New House Batteries for Homer

Yesterday after charging the house batteries in Homer all day they were not holding a charge. I purchased these two six volt batteries for Marge six years ago. I have tried to keep them going but they are just shot. I pulled them out this morning and loaded them in the car. Kellen and I headed to Ellis Battery where I had purchased them. Upon arriving I told the salesman that the batteries could not be more than 10 3/4 inches tall because that only left me a 1/4 inch to get the batteries into the compartment. He measured his batteries and they were taller. We then compared the new ones to the old ones and when he saw my old batteries he said he didn't have any of those in stock but the store in Fredericktown, Missouri, did. He called that store to verify that they had two in stock before I drove there. They did so off we went. It was a sixty mile drive to that store from Cape. When we got there he brought out the duplicates of my old batteries to load. They looked taller so I measured them. Sure enough they were a half inch taller. I couldn't use them. He said he had another battery that was the height of my old ones but were $15.00 more each. He brought them out. I measured them and they were eleven inches, a 1/4 inch shorter than the cheaper ones. I decided I had no choice. I had to figure out how to make them work so I bought them.

It was 1:30 p.m. when we got back home.  Despite the heat I decided to get to work on installing the new batteries. I used a bucket with boards on top to get a level place to position the batteries to go into the compartment. I knew they were too tall but I had to be sure. I needed to cut a 1/4 inch off each lead post and each threaded post to get them to fit. I used my Sawzall for this purpose. Fortunately just the other day I purchased some new metal cutting blades.  Here is a picture of the work area with the bucket and compartment area in the background.

Here is a picture of one battery with three of the terminals cut off. The red arrow on the left points to the lead terminal cut off. The red arrow on the right points to the threaded terminal, which is the one I use fortunately. There would be no way to get the batteries into the compartment if I had to use the lead terminals. The green arrow points to the uncut lead terminal to show you how tall they were. 

I got both batteries up on the bucket and boards. I then cut plastic strips from an empty milk jug. I wire tied a plastic strip over each terminal so it would not touch the metal compartment frame and spark as I pushed the batteries into place. (I learned that from prior experience even with the shorter batteries.) I connected the batteries in series to get 12 volts, then slowly pushed them into the compartment. It is very close quarters.  Here is a picture of the batteries installed. The red arrows show the distance between the top of the compartment and the top of the batteries. It is only about only about a 1/4 of an inch.

When I finished the job I found that apparently I had gotten battery acid on my shorts. Here is a picture of the result. (The second pair of shorts I've ruined in the last couple of weeks.)

Nothing is going smoothly lately. After finishing the project when I went to move the car the key would not come out of the ignition. I wiggled everything - the ignition, the gear shift, the gear shift button, etc. No luck. I called my friend John who had recently had the same problem in his vehicle. What he did to get the key out didn't work for me. He did a YouTube search and he figured out how to get the key out. The problem unfortunately repeats each time I insert the key. Off to the Chevy dealer in a week to see what is malfunctioning.