There was a manual vs. automatic war and I MISSED it?

Darn.

I'm on your side.

How did that not make it into the auto manual war? Push starting IS my roadside assistance

Wouldn't a Fit's engine also be amenable to a lawnmower-style rope-starter? I mean, it's not that big :)

spdrun, you're close--
 

Back in the day when my mom's 1st gen '73 Civic's battery died from leaving the lights on, I jumpstarted it with--

My Suzuki GT750.

Of course, I left the engine running during the jump..

Now that's funny. Which one had the larger engine, the Zook or the Honda?

You have to be careful jumping cars off bikes. If the bike has a permanent magnet alternator, the regulator may be a bigass 13.5V Zener diode crowbarred between +12V and frame ground. Talk about an ugly/inelegant piece of electronic engineering. The extra amps from a car alternator, once it comes online, will release the smoke from this device.

If the bike has a switching regulator or has a excited-field (read: car-type) alternator, this is a non-issue.

the Civic was either 1100 or 1300CC, don't really recall-- the bike was 750CC.
I think it had a "real" alternator on it, I did it a couple of times and the only smoke I saw was out the 4 tailpipes..2 stroke, of course

But I did have a motobecane moped that had that diode, never tried to jump anything with it though..

-Heater fans using a lot of current all things considered.

-Lead acid batteries, especially starting batteries, have really crappy peukert exponents.

My 1971 International Cub Cadet 73 has a battery twice the size of the Smart car's dumb battery........my 1973 Honda 350-4 MC had battery the same size as the Smart's. Ha!

need some battery help?
 

Hey Tom.

I've got some batteries on the floor; should I bring them when I drive up? :D

Converting the Fit to an EV?

it is pretty funny Smart battery is small. I would have expected because of MB influence the typical MB style ridiculously huge battery (like your 300 D battery that is bigger than Smart engine) that would take up the entire front end of the car under the hood :D

It is an auto. Its the wife's car. If mine would be a stick.

If it's a Group 51R, my wife's old 2001 Prius took a similar size battery that basically did nothing but power up the relays and instruments. It's got very little reserve. You can get an Optima yellow-top to replace it when it croaks.

I'd imagine 45 mins of blower and radio and some lights would be enough to kill the tiny battery, there's also other stuff like the car computers that are active in the background in a modern car when things are powered.

We're all just used to the tank-batteries in our diesels. :D

The other day my wife left her door open on the 300E in the garage on accident for about 9 hrs, so the puddle lights, dome light, and seatbelt flasher were on the whole time. (about 20-25watts or 2.5A) I checked the battery and it was still at 12.25V. Its a group49 950CCA Diehard...about 3 years old. I put my charger on it for a couple hours and it was right back to 12.6. No issues since.


If you do a google search for "Group 51r battery" the third result is a forum where people are complaining about the stock battery in the Honda Fit. Pretty awesome. :D