We all know that any “simple” job always takes twice as long as long as you think, so changing the battery shouldn’t take more than about 15 minutes, right? Wrong! The battery in my Plus 8 has, amazingly, lasted about 9 years so it’s not surprising that it was starting to struggle as it was well overdue replacement even though the indicator on the battery was green meaning it was good. My first problem was getting the old battery out, on my car it’s by the rear axle, the issue was that since I had the 5 link suspension fitted there’s a bar that goes right over the top of the battery which made unbolting the clamps from the terminals and removing the nuts from the bracket bolts a painfully slow (and painful) process because there wasn’t room to get much travel on the spanner. Once I’d released the bolts I couldn’t get the retaining bracket off as there wasn’t enough room between the battery and the suspension bar, after much wriggling and heaving I eventually managed to yank it free. So far 1 hour, just to get the old battery out!
Next job was to buy a replacement, lots of people rave over Odyssey batteries so that seemed the route to go. A visit to BHM who confirmed that MMC now fit those as standard and I had a nice new PC925, this battery isn’t as tall as the old one so would fit under the bar easily, but it’s square rather than rectangular. The old battery sat on a wooden block on a shelf which meant that the Odyssey hung over the edge of the shelf by some way, I was concerned that it could slide or tip off so I made a frame out of some angle iron and screwed that to the wooden block.
I then had to modify the retaining bracket that fitted perfectly over the old battery but obviously wouldn’t fit the new shape. Next job was to feed the retaining bolts up through the bottom of the car, through the shelf and retaining bracket and spin the nuts on, but of course the bolts were now too long as the battery is shorter and they weren’t threaded far enough down the shaft. It was about this point that my ever-so-helpful wife asked “why didn’t you just get the garage to do it?”, it took a lot of self-restraint not to reply in a way that Marie might feel was antagonistic!
It was a very hot day and far from ideal conditions to be faffing about but I wanted to get it done so that we could go out and enjoy the lovely weather. The next day and a trip to B&Q resulted in a metre of threaded bar and appropriate nuts, cut the bar to length, put a nut on the top to stop it falling through, jack the car up and put it on ramps, crawl underneath to fit the bottom nuts, now I was on a roll and the job would soon be finished. Last job was to reconnect the clamps to the battery, but of course that wasn’t simple either as the earth cable wasn’t now long enough to reach the negative terminal because the battery is smaller, I won’t repeat the expletives that spewed from my normally restrained lips but needless to say it wasn’t “oh dear!”
. Now for the only bit of luck I had, I noticed that the earth cable was attached to the side wall by a “P” cable tie and if I removed that there’d be enough play for the cable to reach the terminal.
So, 5+ hours to complete a 5 minute job, that’s something of a record for me. I just hope that the next time I need to replace the battery this one hasn’t been discontinued and replaced by a completely different size and shape unit.
