Unfortunatley my plans for a nice relaxed evening over a pint were delayed somewhat by having to help to fix Claire’s car, first. In a fantastic display of sense she’d left the headlights on on Sunday night, and all through Monday, and so by Tuesday the battery was very, very dead.
So she, Bryn, Kit and I stood in a cold and rainy car park, trying to remove Bryn’s car battery to get Claire’s car going, then switch back to her battery while it’s running so we could charge it with a nice long drive. But no such luck: the considerate engineers at Vauxhall decided that to remove the battery you must either (a) own a spanner with a neck width about the size of a human hair or (b) remove the engine first.
Thankfully I was able to persuade a taxi driver at the nearby rank to drive around with some jump leads and get her going. Suddenly this made things a lot easier.
In brighter news, Bryn got offered a year in industry placement with the National Library of Wales, which means that he, too, will be living in Aberystwyth for the summer.
you whernt planning on starting it with one battery, taking it out of the car while it was still running and put the other one back were you? if you did that the moment you took the battery out wile it was running, the alternator would blow up because the engine is demanding too much power and the alternator cant handle it. and if the battery was stuffed it wont charge and sraw all the power out of the alternator and the engine will just die.
That was basically our plan, yes (he says, over a decade later). It should be fine while idling so long as the alternator’s working okay.