Weekend plans…

So last night when picking up the roof bars, we discovered the auxiliary battery wasn’t charging. But thinking about it, throughout the weekend I don’t actually recall it charging. I just figured the reading was skewed because I had a load on it at the time.

At some stage since owning it, I did notice that once the isolator didn’t switch over. When I turned the ignition off, then back on, I got the reassuring thud sound and it was connected.

Here it is – so, last night I gave it a few good thumps thinking it might be jammed but it didn’t seem to make any improvement. The cheap and lazy part of me doesn’t want to have to replace something that is sealed and should work fine. I actually had one of these from my last car, but I stupidly took it apart to see how it worked, then threw it out. I think on the weekend, I’ll disconnect it, give it a good few ‘taps’ on the gutter from every which direction and hope it fixes it. Worst case, I’ll buy a new one.

There is one upside to this failure… it meant the fridge ran for two days, the air compressor for ten minutes, the light for an hour and the water pump for a minute or two, and even now it’s still above 50% charge.

It sounds like I’m having a bad run with the car, but for some sick reason, I am enjoying finding these little naggy things now, as they are opportunities to learn, and also fixing them here is easier!

I had previously expressed that I would have preferred to take something potentially more unreliable, but something I knew like the back of my hand. Kind of like ‘the devil you know’ rather than something perfect I don’t yet understand.

I had noticed over the last few weeks, the handbrake light would occasionally flicker on and off as you pulled on, or when releasing the hand brake. Bit weird, but didn’t consider it any further. It wasn’t until the other night that it came on while driving. The dialogue in my head was something like this “ok, panic stations… we’ve lost all hydraulic fluid… gear down, gear down”. It was in fact, the handbrake switch was causing this false alarm. Turns out there is a screw that holds the switch in place along side the handbrake, well it was loose and the switch was flapping around – giving the false reading.

So my weekend list is getting longer and longer, but hey, what are weekends for.