Battery switch

[W. eWatson]

I bought a device that will allow me to undo a plastic knob and
disconnect my battery. Should I put it on the ground or hot cable? The
only negative affect seems to be that I would need to reset the clock
each time I reconnected the battery; otherwise, I would think that no
harm would come to the electronics.

Recently, it's gotten bad enough that it drained my battery.

I'm doing this on a 1997 Plymouth van, since in the rainy season
dampness appears to get into the door latching electronics. That causes
random attempts to lock and unlock the doors. It seems that normally it
locks the doors, but then can't open them. Of course, I use a key to
open the doors when necessary. It's easy to hear the mechanism try to
open or close the latches.

 

[Tim Wescott]

On Sun, 01 Apr 2012 12:46:24 -0700, W. eWatson wrote:

I bought a device that will allow me to undo a plastic knob and
disconnect my battery. Should I put it on the ground or hot cable? The
only negative affect seems to be that I would need to reset the clock
each time I reconnected the battery; otherwise, I would think that no
harm would come to the electronics.

Recently, it's gotten bad enough that it drained my battery.

I'm doing this on a 1997 Plymouth van, since in the rainy season
dampness appears to get into the door latching electronics. That causes
random attempts to lock and unlock the doors. It seems that normally it
locks the doors, but then can't open them. Of course, I use a key to
open the doors when necessary. It's easy to hear the mechanism try to
open or close the latches.

It doesn't make a lot of difference which side of the battery you
disconnect: an open switch is an open switch.

When you're working on a car and need to disconnect a battery you want to
do the side that's connected to the chassis first (which is negative on
anything modern), but that's because you don't want your wrench to short
from the + batter terminal to the frame, with your hand on part of the
conductive path.

If the door locks seem to be the only problem, and if they're on a
separate circuit, you could just pull that fuse. Then you wouldn't have
electric door locks, but you wouldn't have to pop the hood and turn the
switch any time you wanted to go someplace, and your radio would remember
all of its presets.

--
Tim Wescott
Control system and signal processing consulting
www.wescottdesign.com

 

[Jim Thompson]

On Sun, 01 Apr 2012 16:12:30 -0500, Tim Wescott
<tim@seemywebsite.please> wrote:

On Sun, 01 Apr 2012 12:46:24 -0700, W. eWatson wrote:

I bought a device that will allow me to undo a plastic knob and
disconnect my battery. Should I put it on the ground or hot cable? The
only negative affect seems to be that I would need to reset the clock
each time I reconnected the battery; otherwise, I would think that no
harm would come to the electronics.

Recently, it's gotten bad enough that it drained my battery.

I'm doing this on a 1997 Plymouth van, since in the rainy season
dampness appears to get into the door latching electronics. That causes
random attempts to lock and unlock the doors. It seems that normally it
locks the doors, but then can't open them. Of course, I use a key to
open the doors when necessary. It's easy to hear the mechanism try to
open or close the latches.

It doesn't make a lot of difference which side of the battery you
disconnect: an open switch is an open switch.

When you're working on a car and need to disconnect a battery you want to
do the side that's connected to the chassis first (which is negative on
anything modern), but that's because you don't want your wrench to short
from the + batter terminal to the frame, with your hand on part of the
conductive path.

If the door locks seem to be the only problem, and if they're on a
separate circuit, you could just pull that fuse. Then you wouldn't have
electric door locks, but you wouldn't have to pop the hood and turn the
switch any time you wanted to go someplace, and your radio would remember
all of its presets.

Or examine the harness from body to door, and unplug the culprit.

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

 

[Tim Wescott]

On Sun, 01 Apr 2012 14:14:53 -0700, Jim Thompson wrote:

On Sun, 01 Apr 2012 16:12:30 -0500, Tim Wescott
tim@seemywebsite.please> wrote:

On Sun, 01 Apr 2012 12:46:24 -0700, W. eWatson wrote:

I bought a device that will allow me to undo a plastic knob and
disconnect my battery. Should I put it on the ground or hot cable?
The only negative affect seems to be that I would need to reset the
clock each time I reconnected the battery; otherwise, I would think
that no harm would come to the electronics.

Recently, it's gotten bad enough that it drained my battery.

I'm doing this on a 1997 Plymouth van, since in the rainy season
dampness appears to get into the door latching electronics. That
causes random attempts to lock and unlock the doors. It seems that
normally it locks the doors, but then can't open them. Of course, I
use a key to open the doors when necessary. It's easy to hear the
mechanism try to open or close the latches.

It doesn't make a lot of difference which side of the battery you
disconnect: an open switch is an open switch.

When you're working on a car and need to disconnect a battery you want
to do the side that's connected to the chassis first (which is negative
on anything modern), but that's because you don't want your wrench to
short from the + batter terminal to the frame, with your hand on part of
the conductive path.

If the door locks seem to be the only problem, and if they're on a
separate circuit, you could just pull that fuse. Then you wouldn't have
electric door locks, but you wouldn't have to pop the hood and turn the
switch any time you wanted to go someplace, and your radio would
remember all of its presets.

Or examine the harness from body to door, and unplug the culprit.

Yea, but I kinda figured that "chase down the real problem" was off the
table.

But -- it wouldn't hurt to try.

--
My liberal friends think I'm a conservative kook.
My conservative friends think I'm a liberal kook.
Why am I not happy that they have found common ground?

Tim Wescott, Communications, Control, Circuits & Software
http://www.wescottdesign.com

 

[W. eWatson]

On 4/1/2012 2:12 PM, Tim Wescott wrote:

On Sun, 01 Apr 2012 12:46:24 -0700, W. eWatson wrote:

I bought a device that will allow me to undo a plastic knob and
disconnect my battery. Should I put it on the ground or hot cable? The
only negative affect seems to be that I would need to reset the clock
each time I reconnected the battery; otherwise, I would think that no
harm would come to the electronics.

Recently, it's gotten bad enough that it drained my battery.

I'm doing this on a 1997 Plymouth van, since in the rainy season
dampness appears to get into the door latching electronics. That causes
random attempts to lock and unlock the doors. It seems that normally it
locks the doors, but then can't open them. Of course, I use a key to
open the doors when necessary. It's easy to hear the mechanism try to
open or close the latches.

It doesn't make a lot of difference which side of the battery you
disconnect: an open switch is an open switch.

When you're working on a car and need to disconnect a battery you want to
do the side that's connected to the chassis first (which is negative on
anything modern), but that's because you don't want your wrench to short
from the + batter terminal to the frame, with your hand on part of the
conductive path.

If the door locks seem to be the only problem, and if they're on a
separate circuit, you could just pull that fuse. Then you wouldn't have
electric door locks, but you wouldn't have to pop the hood and turn the
switch any time you wanted to go someplace, and your radio would remember
all of its presets.

Ah, I forgot about the presets. I think my users manual has a

description of the fuses. I have some small recollection of pulling out
one of them for some other similar problem.

 

[W. eWatson]

On 4/1/2012 2:14 PM, Jim Thompson wrote:

On Sun, 01 Apr 2012 16:12:30 -0500, Tim Wescott
tim@seemywebsite.please> wrote:

On Sun, 01 Apr 2012 12:46:24 -0700, W. eWatson wrote:

I bought a device that will allow me to undo a plastic knob and
disconnect my battery. Should I put it on the ground or hot cable? The
only negative affect seems to be that I would need to reset the clock
each time I reconnected the battery; otherwise, I would think that no
harm would come to the electronics.

Recently, it's gotten bad enough that it drained my battery.

I'm doing this on a 1997 Plymouth van, since in the rainy season
dampness appears to get into the door latching electronics. That causes
random attempts to lock and unlock the doors. It seems that normally it
locks the doors, but then can't open them. Of course, I use a key to
open the doors when necessary. It's easy to hear the mechanism try to
open or close the latches.

It doesn't make a lot of difference which side of the battery you
disconnect: an open switch is an open switch.

When you're working on a car and need to disconnect a battery you want to
do the side that's connected to the chassis first (which is negative on
anything modern), but that's because you don't want your wrench to short
from the + batter terminal to the frame, with your hand on part of the
conductive path.

If the door locks seem to be the only problem, and if they're on a
separate circuit, you could just pull that fuse. Then you wouldn't have
electric door locks, but you wouldn't have to pop the hood and turn the
switch any time you wanted to go someplace, and your radio would remember
all of its presets.

Or examine the harness from body to door, and unplug the culprit.

...Jim Thompson
Well, maybe. There are two front doors, two side sliding doors, and a

hatch. All seem to get going at some point.

 

[Tim Wescott]

On Sun, 01 Apr 2012 19:51:03 -0700, W. eWatson wrote:

On 4/1/2012 2:14 PM, Jim Thompson wrote:
On Sun, 01 Apr 2012 16:12:30 -0500, Tim Wescott
tim@seemywebsite.please> wrote:

On Sun, 01 Apr 2012 12:46:24 -0700, W. eWatson wrote:

I bought a device that will allow me to undo a plastic knob and
disconnect my battery. Should I put it on the ground or hot cable?
The only negative affect seems to be that I would need to reset the
clock each time I reconnected the battery; otherwise, I would think
that no harm would come to the electronics.

Recently, it's gotten bad enough that it drained my battery.

I'm doing this on a 1997 Plymouth van, since in the rainy season
dampness appears to get into the door latching electronics. That
causes random attempts to lock and unlock the doors. It seems that
normally it locks the doors, but then can't open them. Of course, I
use a key to open the doors when necessary. It's easy to hear the
mechanism try to open or close the latches.

It doesn't make a lot of difference which side of the battery you
disconnect: an open switch is an open switch.

When you're working on a car and need to disconnect a battery you want
to do the side that's connected to the chassis first (which is
negative on anything modern), but that's because you don't want your
wrench to short
from the + batter terminal to the frame, with your hand on part of the
conductive path.

If the door locks seem to be the only problem, and if they're on a
separate circuit, you could just pull that fuse. Then you wouldn't
have electric door locks, but you wouldn't have to pop the hood and
turn the switch any time you wanted to go someplace, and your radio
would remember all of its presets.

Or examine the harness from body to door, and unplug the culprit.

...Jim Thompson
Well, maybe. There are two front doors, two side sliding doors, and a
hatch. All seem to get going at some point.

If it has a keyless entry system, I'd try disconnecting the receiver for
the entry system, or (if there is one) whatever bit of power electronics
is downstream from it that's pulling the solenoids or motors. Once
you're at the point of driving many amps at 12V into a motor or solenoid
it would take more than just moisture to set things off.

Otherwise -- pull the fuse.

--
My liberal friends think I'm a conservative kook.
My conservative friends think I'm a liberal kook.
Why am I not happy that they have found common ground?

Tim Wescott, Communications, Control, Circuits & Software
http://www.wescottdesign.com

 

[Jasen Betts]

On 2012-04-01, W. eWatson <wolftracks@invalid.com> wrote:

I bought a device that will allow me to undo a plastic knob and
disconnect my battery. Should I put it on the ground or hot cable? The
only negative affect seems to be that I would need to reset the clock
each time I reconnected the battery; otherwise, I would think that no
harm would come to the electronics.

In the ground leg there's less uninslated live metal around.

I'm doing this on a 1997 Plymouth van, since in the rainy season
dampness appears to get into the door latching electronics. That causes
random attempts to lock and unlock the doors. It seems that normally it
locks the doors, but then can't open them. Of course, I use a key to
open the doors when necessary. It's easy to hear the mechanism try to
open or close the latches.

I'd be removing the fuse for the locking.

--
⚂⚃ 100% natural

--- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to news@netfront.net ---

 

[Tom Biasi]

On Sun, 01 Apr 2012 12:46:24 -0700, "W. eWatson"
<wolftracks@invalid.com> wrote:

I bought a device that will allow me to undo a plastic knob and
disconnect my battery. Should I put it on the ground or hot cable? The
only negative affect seems to be that I would need to reset the clock
each time I reconnected the battery; otherwise, I would think that no
harm would come to the electronics.

Recently, it's gotten bad enough that it drained my battery.

I'm doing this on a 1997 Plymouth van, since in the rainy season
dampness appears to get into the door latching electronics. That causes
random attempts to lock and unlock the doors. It seems that normally it
locks the doors, but then can't open them. Of course, I use a key to
open the doors when necessary. It's easy to hear the mechanism try to
open or close the latches.

You may also want to check the ECM, it can cause all sorts of strange
behavior.