bateries and alarms

[MickintheNorth]

Hi again,

Just wondering how long I can leave the Chimeara in the garage with the alarf fully armed in the winter without taking her out for a spin to recharge the battery.

Anyone have any ideas? Is it ages or is is a couple of months or what?

[fatsteve]

Hi again,

Just wondering how long I can leave the Chimeara in the garage with the alarf fully armed in the winter without taking her out for a spin to recharge the battery.

Anyone have any ideas? Is it ages or is is a couple of months or what?

With the old Meta (standard alarm) I left it for 2 weeks at most, was a bit grumbly on start but there was enough juice to crank it.

Best thing to do is if you garage it, get youself a battery optimiser and just get into the habit of leaving it on trickle charge when your not using it.

I've only had the alarm go of twice in mine (due to battery drainage), and TBO it's a real pain in the arse since you'll need to break into the car, stick the battery on charge then disarm the alarm. All done whilst the bloody alarm is screeming in your lug-holes!!

I've got the OptiMate one that's hard wired onto the battery, just need to open the boot and plug it into the mains. I bought the same unit for my father-in-laws bike, cost about £40.

Steve

[MickintheNorth]

Thanks Steve,

So if the battery gets flat, how do you break into a Chimaera then? The emergency door release (supposedly in the boot) confuses the hell out of me - how are you supposed to open the boot without getting into the car first to put the key in the ingition. And if the battery is flat, does the boot release still work????? Can you get the roof off without releasing the tension beams? I must be missing something.

A couple of other newbie questions - might as well get them over with while I'm here:

1) How much coolant should there be in the reserve coolant expansion tank when cold? Half full? The manual says check coolant level, but it's an opaque metal tank, and it says top up the header tank, but presumably this is only when changing the coolant?

2) I have a small plastic block with 2 buttons mounted in between the electric window switches - just noticed it a couple of days ago ;-) I have no idea what it does - could be air con but the (non TVR) dealer I bought it from didn't mention aircon in the spec, it's not in the right place and it's too cold outside now to tell if turnig the heater all the way down makes it colder or not. Any ideas - it certainly looks like some kind of add-on, I havn't had time to play with it properly yet.

God I feel like a real newbie now. I need a bible quicker than they are printing them. Any suggestions much appreciated.

Cheers
Mick

[Dollar Bill]

On the cooler expansion tank it should be about half full. Not so sure about the rest.

Cheers

[shpub]

Dollar Bill said: On the cooler expansion tank it should be about half full. Not so sure about the rest.

Cheers

It depends... some are two inchers below the top, some are half full and some are empty. My first Griff 500 was a two incher. Current is an empty tanker.

As for getting in... This is not really the best place to describe how to break in to the car.

As for the twin buttons.... NOS and Supercharger ON? No idea.

Steve