[Vwdiesel] Battery tender

[William J Toensing]

I can highly recommend battery tenders if you want to save money on batteries. I bought my 1993 Rockwood Embassy diesel pusher motorhome 10 years ago & it still has the same engine two batteries that were installed when I bought it. Knowing it would be driven infrequently, I installed a battery tender & amazingly, those 10+ year old batteries still start the Cummings 5.9 L intercooled turbodiesel. Wished I hadn't bought it as it doesn't get enough use & has been in " Calif. non-operational" status for the past 4 years & is for sale at $25,000. Has under 44,000 miles & a good buy for someone who can use a motorhome.

Solving the "imobilizer" problem by disconnecting the battery reminds me of another tip that might help some of you. Several years ago, I bought a 6 disk changer on eBay that was compatible with my OEM 2001 Ford Focus cassette radio. Worked fine for a while, then the Focus radio couldn't control it properly. Then I disconnected the Focus battery for a while for some other reason. Then found the CD changer worked fine ever since. On my original Focus radio, something fell against my original Focus CD radio & Ford wouldn't cover it under warranty & wanted over $700 to replace it. Went to a local auto radio repair shop that wanted over $125 to fix it, & junk yards wanted as much for a replacement. Went on eBay & found several Focus cassette radios for sale for around $25 so I got greedy & got several as I figured this would be cheaper than having the existing radio fixed. So far, the replacement radio is working some 8 years & 118,000 miles later, so the others are on the shelf. Seems a lot of kids would buy a Focus & then upgrade the radio. The same tactic might work for VW radio replacement on later models.
Bill Toensing, Nevada City, CA