La Battarie Est Mort, Vive La Batterie!

[Igor Kessel <e6941tb@ix.netcom.com>]

Hello, club!

Came back from England, started the car for the first time in 11 days.
It sed wow-wow-wow-wrummm rather reluctantly. Drove to work. At lunch 
started the car. Got only a clacking noise from the starter solenoid.
Oh, well, here goes my chineese lunch for today. In the evening pulled 
the gazillion-metre-long jumper cable set from the trunk. Jump started 
the car. The alt is joyfully charging at 13.6v. Came home, shut the car 
off. No start. The batt sez 12.2v. Since I don't have a load fork yet, I 
decided to take a look at how long ago did I buy the current battery. 
Fired up the old Pentium 100 clunker and searched by *battery* in my MS 
Access Database, named *'89 200TQ*. Turn out it was Jan of '95, AC Delco.

Replaced the battery anyhow. The problem gone.

Two reasons why I am posting this banal report to the list:

1. Don't you just love the cute way that the batt guys warranty their 
crappy products! That piece of excrement batt had lasted for only 31 mos 
instead of the promised 60. They pro-rated it for the remainig mos 
and applied towards the cost of my new Exide 72mos batt, so I am hooked 
up with them eternally. Coz nowhere in hell any battery, other than the 
genuine Audi's *Autobahn*, is gonna last for 72mos. Their *warranty* 
should be called a *lease* instead, with the certain monthly payment 
installments.

2. Don't ever buy a Group 41 battery (Audi underseat fitment) without a 
ventilation elbow built in.
When I pulled the old batt out, the floor underneath it was covered with 
white powder. SOB was boiling and overflowing. I had to disassemble the 
whole area behind the front seats and wash the floor with baking soda.
A normally 10 min batt replacement job turned into a 2 day affair 
(including drying of the floors).
Thank Audi gods for the galvanised sheetmetal on our cars. An acid flood 
like this on a lesser car would've turned the rear floorpan into a fern 
leaf.
-- 
Igor Kessel
'89 200TQ - 18psi (TAP)
'98 A4TQ - on order
Philadelphia, PA
USA