So in Germany the weather is quickly turning bad and I have officially put the car in storage for the winter. I am only about 15 minutes away from the storage unit but I dont get over there every week even.

The weather was decent this weekend so I went to take the car out and the battery was DEAD. Dead enough that I couldnt pop the "hood" to get to the battery.

Anyone have any tricks/tips or devices to use to maintain the battery? The one issue is I dont have access to an electrical outlet to plug in a trickle charger.....

 

Difficult to maintain without electrical power...I've heard of folks removing the battery and hooking it up to a maintainer at home. If you do that, be sure to leave your hood unlatched.

 

this^

your storage doesnt have a light bulb? if it does you could get an adaptor that screws in and gives you and outlet and a bulb.

 

^^^

There are socket adapters for the light bulb socket to transform it to a plug. If you don't have that, I take the battery out and put it on a maintenance charger at home. Make sure you do not I MEAN, DO NOT, close you hood. Otherwise you will be finding yourself ripping you driver wheel well in the spring to get to the release cable.

BTW, how long was it left stored until you tried to start it? It would appear that you didn't have it for stored for long. A good conditioned battery shouldn't go dead for weeks.

 

It was about 4 weeks from when I put it in storage.

The light sockets are florescent, wonder if the adapters work for those.

 

http://batterytender.com/products/solar.html

 

Depends. Is the housing s screw in socket, then yes. If is it a tube style ballast, then no

 

The best option for you was mentioned above and that is to remove the battery and maintain it at home via a CTEK or Battery Tender - both offer excellent chargers.

Mark/Pelican Parts

 

The difficult problem is solved - you have power to the storage facility so you just need to wire up a plug receptacle. Make sure it's hot all the time - you don't want it to turn off when you switch off the light. Very easy to do.

 

No one here has mentioned the Porsche brand battery tender which plugs into the cig lighter socket I believe.

Is this not a good solution for winter storage here in Michigan???

Thanks to all!

 

It doesn't do any good if there is no electrical socket, which is what the OP is stating.

 

Ok guys so I have partially solved my problem...I spoke to the owner of the storage facility and there is an outlet that I can use to connect the trickle charger to....the issue now is that it is 220V not 120V. I would rather not have to buy a 220V one then have to rebuy in 2 years a 120V one.

I can connect a transformer but what kind of wattage would I need? I would imagine something very low since it pulls almost no Voltage or amperage....

Any recommendation on transformer watt size?

 

220-electronics.com. $8 bucks.