Trip blogging interrupted . . .

. . . By an “emergency” van project.

Copied from my FB page:

The battery of my van is dead, so I have been educating myself on what to do. It’s never been replaced, so have decided that the obvious thing to do is buy a new one and replace it (it’s eight years old). Should be a simple, routine operation, right? I’ve done it myself at least once on every other vehicle I’ve owned. But no—it is clearly going to be a major pain in the a$$. Starting with getting the old one out.

First, find your battery. Call me oblivious, but I had literally never noticed that I saw no battery when I opened the hood. Turns out the battery is UNDER THE FLOOR UNDER THE DRIVER’S FEET. Just watched a video of someone removing his battery, and is clearly going to be a challenge. Followed, no doubt, by the challenge of installing the new one.

Stay tuned.

Decided to get started today, even though it’s Sunday and couldn’t get the battery today.

First step: remove floor mat.

Which has been the simplest step so far. Once the correct screw bit was found–the proliferation of types of screws–in addition to slot and Phillips, we now have hex, square, and star, requiring an equivalent proliferation of screwdriver bits–is one of the minor irritations of my old age. Anyway. I happened to have the type and size needed, so once that was located this required only removing three screws and pulling up the floor mat. Followed by vacuuming.

The result:

Next step: remove that black plate. There should be four screws there, but there were only three–I’ll try to replace the fourth when reversing my steps once the new battery is purchased and in. This time I had to run out to the hardware store just outside town, which is open Sundays, but was successful in getting a bit that worked on those screws.

And there’s the battery.

Removing the cable from the left (negative?) terminal worked “normally”–that is, loosen the bolt and pry the lead attachment open enough to lift the cable off. The one on the right required yet another search for the right tool, which turned out to be a 13 mm box wrench, though I’ve now located my 13 mm socket so putting it back together will be slightly easier.

Here it is with the cables removed from the right (positive?) terminal. According to one of the videos I watched, that’s the fuse box there. God forbid I should ever have to change one of those fuses if so.

I had only faint hope the battery was removable at this point, and sure enough there were a couple of bolts yet to go, WAY down there. Here’s one of them, just peeking out from that bit of hose.

So, another hunt for tools, this time for an extender long enough to reach the bolt and a socket wrench with adapter from quarter to eighth inch whatchmacallit, and a 10 mm socket.

I’d been wondering what the black plastic thingy on the left three pictures up was for. Turns out it’s so you can pull those bolts out from a very tight spot. Here they are.

I do not look forward to getting those back in. I expect it to be very fiddly.

This is where I’m stopping for today. The battery is heavy enough, and the angle for lifting it out is awkward enough, that I shall seek assistance from a human with upper body strength superior to my own, i.e. one of the men on my block. For tomorrow: get. it out and into the car, buy a new one the exact same size and configuration, and install it. I hope.