Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Isetta - Battery Blues

Before I put the interior panel in on the drivers side of my Isetta, I wanted to connect the battery and test that electrical system was working correctly. Unfortunately a mistake I made was I bought my battery a little premature in the restoration process. It's been sitting for a couple of years on a trickle charger. I occasionally used it to power a winch or with a power inverter during power outages. Now that I'm ready to install it in my Isetta, I made a couple of angle brackets that  basically moved the terminals from the top to the front side of the battery. The reason I did this was so that I could add a battery cutoff switch that was easy to access, and to move the battery connections away from the seat springs which has been the cause of many Isetta fires. It was a good plan but when I connected my cables I got NOTHING. At first I panicked thinking something was wrong with my wiring. Prior to installing the battery, I had a green light on my charger showing it was charged, but a quick check with the volt meter showed it was only at 7V and dropping fast. I removed it from the car and the next morning after leaving it off the charger overnight it drained down below 1V. Suffice to say, I think this battery is toast. Since not a single electrical thing worked on the car, I'm really hoping the battery is the only problem, and even though I'm not happy I have to buy another battery, I'd be thrilled if this is the only problem and everything checks out when I get a new battery. Until then?????

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