The yuck, I has it

[greatbear]

I has a cold. A nasty one. I look and feel like hammered dogshit. This is my third day of this nastiness, and I'm staying in bed as much as I can. I can't take too much of the room spinning in opposite directions from where I'm walking, bumping into walls, and chilled to the bone. I made the mistake of doing work on the Mini Cooper during the day (it needed it's FOURTH battery), I got halfway through my work and became a nauseous, freezing mess and had to go inside and rest in front of the space heater. Since I had everything spread out, I had to muster the energy to go back and finish what I started, and did just that. I still have a temperature, but not as bad as yesterday. I'm still horking up copious amounts of lung butter and generally drowning in my own juices, but I think that is on the wane a bit as well.

Blergh. I hate being sick.

Comments

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

I've actually resorted to putting my leg out the door, rolling the car backwards and popping the clutch when a battery was too weak to crank the engine.

Since MINIs (at least my vintage) have their electrical systems lifted practically intact from the 3-series, it inherits the same issues. For one, there is a rather high parasitic draw from all the electronics sitting in standby. This is a problem with a lot of cars these days. The other problem is the voltage regulator has the charge voltage fixed at about 13.8 volts. In cold weather, this perpetually undercharges the battery, which wants to see at least 14.5 volts, if not more, dependent on temperature of the battery. There's generally no problem in the summer, but every battery I had in this thing has given up in cold weather unless I drive it daily and/or connect a battery maintainer. I think BMW thinks that since most of their cars have batteries somewhere in the passenger compartment, they are always going to be warm and toasty.

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

What I don't understand is why on earth would a Bavarian company would design such an obvious flaw. It's not like they don't have brutal winters.

[greatbearmd.livejournal.com]

They need more Black Forest voltage regulators. =D