I have a 1997 Mitsubishi Diamante garaged in NYC 114k miles. I don't have much trouble with the car. It's in good shape. But since I rarely drive it ( milage gives that away ) I am not giving the battery the juice it needs
There are no electrical outlets in the garage space. Is there a trickle charger that is portable, can plug into the electrical system thru the lighter? ( can't leave the hood open all the time ) . I could charge the charger at home and bring it down every few days to keep the battery topped off. I will buy a AGM Battery but not sure what I can do ( by the way are AGM batteries better?
Yes the ADM batteries are good now for charging it if you don't want to take the battery out of the car I don't know of any battery operated trickle charges but you can get any trickle charger and any of those power battery packs I have like 12 of them I'm testing out here where you just plug the trickle charger into that battery pack
Thanks Scotty and guys!! I know you probably do not think much of this Australian assembled 3.5 L Mitsu, but I will say I have had very few problems with it since 1997. The paint job looks like new and it is just as full o'torque n rearin to zoom as it was when it was new. Shifts smoothly and the air con is still working ( just NYC is HARD on suspensions ) Any scanner you recommend for this car? The Blue Driver does not give me enough info it seems. This is a OBD2 vee-hickle. The problem with taking the battery out ( besides living in an apartment in NYC ). is .. no battery seems to reset the computer and then it seems the throttle body gets reset to an initial position not compensating for whatever it was at due to the current milage and maybe buildup in the throttle body(?) and then I have idling problems that only resolve after driving it for some odd number of miles ( which in my case would be 2 months worth of driving! ( Scotty laugh photo) maybe I can put a stronger alternator on later ? ( say like in 2030? at the rate I am going ) my parking space is in the bottom of my garage and there is no sunlight ([bad 🙁 ] .. ( just const temps all year round, good for preservation 🙂 ) Learning a lot from your channel
Are you able to to install a solar battery maintainer on the outside of that garage and run wires to the car?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GTD1X2Q
unfortunately not enuff light it it's batcave
That would be my first choice as well, too bad it is not possible.
you'd be better off just taking the battery out of the car and bringing it with you when you want to use the car
If you are at the garage every now and then, I would go with a power pack to charge it, it would be very portable. You could plug a little 1ah trickle charger in and see how it does. You could still attach the charger straight to the battery and close the hood, or shut it lightly, it shouldn't hurt anything with that small of a power cord. If you must charge it through the cigarette lighter plug, you should be able to get an adapter. Just be careful not to burn your car up by charging it, I have heard some horror stories.
I got one of these about 10 years ago and it does great. It has the biggest AGM battery of any power-pack I could find, like 26ah, or half the size of a standard car battery. One like it would work well.
You would have to be careful of the power draw, or risk having the trickle charger completely killing the battery on the power-pack. Most power stations only have a 10-15ah Battery.
I am thinking to get one of these battery based chargers... besides going down and just starting the engine and running it a bit in place from time to time ( it's a HUGE hundreds of cars garage in a Manhattan high rise complex ) I was going to replace the battery when my alternator failed but I bought a battery tester and it said charging system and battery are fine! Scotty recommended the testers. I got a decent one that looked like the cheaper ones he recommended for around 28 bucks. I had driven about 70 miles on the highway to a friend's house with no issues and it was on the way back at NIGHT!, that the alternator gave out and I barely made it off the highway! ( I DO pat my car on the hood and thank it for getting me off the highway and onto a quiet street before it gave up the alternator ghost. It was sputtering and going down on the highway and all I could do was pray and plead that it make it to the nearest exit and not leave me blacked out in teh middle of a highway full of speeding nuts with no blinkers etc) Cheez, I didn't realize before that no alternator means the whole damn engine system will fail. And that means no emergency blinkers etc! so this is a cautionary tale to others that were not in the know. As Yoda once said Emergency kit ? purchase will I!