Need advice for car after 5 months idle.

I've been working out of the country for the last 5 months and my car has been sitting in a garage gathering dust. A friend who I had asked to warm up the car said that the battery had died when he went to go start it up. I had the oil changed just a week before I left.

 

What should I do to get my car back up and running safely?

charge the battery, check the oil and start it.

Might want to check the tire pressures. Check the spare as well.

 

Also might want to top off the fuel tank with some fresh gas, or put in some kind of treatment to absorb water in the fuel system.

Changing the oil before you left was the best thing that you could have done. If it was garaged with a full tank of gas, moisture shouldn't be too much of a problem - just make sure you take it on a nice long ride on its first time out (30 mins or so to take care of any moisture), giving it plenty of time to warm up before stomping on it (4-5 minutes or several miles). Check tire pressures and all fluid levels, charge the battery, and go.

You should plan on replacing the battery soon. If you left it connected without a battery tender, the security system will have drained the battery dead. Which you experience.

 

Once a lead acid battery sits without a charge, the lead plates will undergo sulfination and are be permanently damaged. You may be able to charge the battery, however, the charge capacity will be pretty close to nil. Your now marginal battery will bite you in the backside at the least opportune time.

 

Somewhere on this site I wrote a fairly complete set of tests that you can perform to determine the charge state capacity of the battery. All it takes is a volt meter after you've driven the car for about 20 minutes and let it cool so that the battery compartment comes back to ambient air temperature.

Apparently my battery is toast. Any suggestions on a good replacement???

costco generic battery is like $40-45 for our fitment. Being lazy and with my FMIC piping being a pita, i chose the Red Size 35 Optima instead. Went for $140 iirc. I could have made the cheaper one work, but it took me a 10 minutes and a really bloody finger to pull out the stock battery.

 

If you do get an uprated battery, i'd look into some of the other "racing" style batteries first. mine was more of an emergency purchase.

 

 

Mike

+1 on the Costco battery. I think it ran me something like $42 dollars after the core return. Since I live in a temperate area, I really don't need to spend big bucks on a battery with lots of CCA and a battery that needs to perform at -20 degrees.