Boatingnyc

Hello -
I have a 98 Maxima that I store for a couple months at a time. I put a disconnect switch on the battery (negative side) so I can easily start my car after a couple of months. It usually works great.. However, when I tried to start the car after turning on the switch this time the battery was dead . It was a autozone duralast battery that was less than a year old. Should I be using a better battery if I store my car with these disconnect switches since I dont have access to an outlet for a trickle charger. My alternator is fine.. but was surprised the disconnect switch didnt save the battery from going completely dead. Any ideas on what I can do better to protect my battery when storing it outside ?

Thanks in advance

Dan

Turbobink

iTrader: (2)

I’ve found that, most of time, this issue isn’t typically the battery, it’s the disconnect. I’ve had problems with two disconnects in the recent past and I no longer use them.

My recommendation would be to ditch the disconnect switch, go back to using the regular old cable(s) and simply disconnect the cables (cables, being plural) while the car sits.

Boatingnyc

If you had to pick a disconnect switch. Would it be the dial type or the on /off lever type ?

chrome91

iTrader: (1)

It's likely the disconnect that's acting up and was likely supplying a bit of power that slowly drained, my mom has a van that gets driven 5 times a year max and it has the screw-in style disconnect on the negative terminal, with a 5 year old battery it can sit for 3 months at a time and when you screw in the disconnect it starts right up

pethelman

I've had good luck with the dial type on multiple vehicles in the past, but I agree with the other comments. The battery should not have died unless 1) it was already very old and perhaps one of the cells was already failing internally, or 2) the disconnect was not working properly. You can remove all doubt about the disconnect switch by carrying along a voltmeter after you install it and then checking for ZERO volts between the disconnected side of the switch and the negative battery terminal. You may need to wait a few minutes after you've disconnected to give all the electronics/capacitors time to discharge before achieving a true ZERO measurement. If you can't ever get this measurement to go all the way to zero (for example still reading some millivolts), then this might be indicating that the disconnect switch is really not fully OPEN but instead just creating a high resistance path. If you can verify that the switch is working properly then you should be good to go. It's not going to somehow fail and re-connect itself while just sitting there.
Cheers