can I leave my car unattended for 2 weeks without starting the car? What will happen ? and how can I mitigate it ? Thanks
welcome! nothing, it will be fine. the main concern is the 12v battery. if you have sks, shut the switch off beneath the steering wheel. if your 12v is original, you may want to invest in a smart charger, or jump pack. other than the 12v, there are no worries. learn where the jump point is under the hood in the fuse box. have a great trip!
If you're in a garage and have the wherewithal, I would hook up an appropriate smart charger (look in Owner's Manual for amperage ceiling), one that's able to be left on indefinitely. Or, if you don't have secure garage, and this is maybe safer: charge it, or go for a goodly drive, then when you park it for the duration, disconnect and securely isolate the 12 volt negative cable. Be prepared for subsequent opening the car with the manual key, and a crawl through the car to reconnect, probably best to have the hatch area floor and sub-floor tray out of the car, to make thing easier. OTOH, 2 weeks, @bisco's probably right, but I'm OCD enough to take drastic meaures.
When we were in Ohio for a little over two weeks, we did nothing at all with my wife's '07. Came home and it started right up.
2 weeks is probably OK for the HV battery, but with it being 9 years old now, I wouldn't want to let it go much longer. For instance, in another recent thread, a member posted the disclaimer from his battery re-builder, which specified the warranty on the battery would be voided if the car was not started and run for 30 minutes at least every 2 weeks. Last year I was out of town for 5 or 6 weeks and had no choice but to leave my 2007 sitting in the driveway for that entire time. When I came back, the first thing I did was go into Torque Pro and check the voltages on the different blocks in the HV battery. The difference between the block with highest voltage and the one with the lowest voltage was around .4V. (I believe that is very close to level at which the ECU will throw a code that the HV battery needs to be replaced.) It never did give me any warning lights and after taking it out on the road a few times, I see the Delta drop to .2 to .25V, where it has pretty much remained since. We are going to be taking one of our Prii on a 2 month trip to Florida in the next week or so. Guess which one is going to be left sitting in the driveway? The one still under warranty, of course.
It is an old pack comprised of old second-hand modules, after all. Totally different situation to a new or untouched older pack. The algorithm is a little more complex than just straight voltage deltas. No surprises there.
All the same, there is no denying that an older pack will become unbalanced, if given enough down time to discharge substantially.
Only if it is self-discharging substantially, then it is already on the way out. A pack that hasn't been monkeyed with will likely be better than one that has, given that the monkeyed pack already has problems.
Maybe I worry too much. My battery has never been touched, so I suppose it will endure a long period of inactivity better than others, but I'm still well aware that it is on borrowed time. I don't want to test the limits of its endurance, and I'm sure the OP feels the same way, or he wouldn't be asking the question.
Everybody worries about the battery. It's like death and taxes. Just monitor the IR, quickly alleviates the worry, providing it looks ok. .
'08 with 140K, all oem (no replacement battery (12v or otherwise). We went on a 3 week trip using our '16 v, we came back and all was good with the '08.
Thanks for the advice. IR = Internal Resistance, correct? In one of my Torque Pro screens, I am monitoring the IR of all 14 blocks, but I've never seen the gauges show anything other than 0. I suspect the values are all being rounded off to 0 and I really need a higher level of precision to see the true IR. I'm thinking I might see the more precise values if I add that field to my download for all 14 blocks. I will try that at my next opportunity.
You did turn off the SKS though, right? I would say that is a "must do" for the Gen 2 car if you are going to leave it unattended for any length of time. To be safe, I actually unhooked the 12V connection to ground before I went on my trip, even though the battery was only a few months old. I didn't think letting the battery sit with even a minimal draw could be very good for it. Of course, that meant I had to do the "crawl through the luggage compartment" thing to open the hatch when I came back. (I believe I had tried that before I unhooked the battery, just to be sure I could do it afterwards). At least with the Gen 4, I wouldn't have to do any crawling, but I've decided to try something else since I do not want to lose my radio and navigation settings, either. Since my car will be sitting outside with some exposure to the sun, a month or so ago I bought this 1.5 Watt Solar Battery Charger, to put on my windshield, and this 7 Amp Solar Charge Regulator, to go under the hood. So far the system has been working as intended, but of course I've been clearing any snow off the solar panel as it accumulates. I won't be able to do that when I'm in Florida. Hopefully, NYC won't be getting buried too many times while we are gone.
Well, you must be doing something right if your battery is 10 years old and still that reliable.;-) Mostly highway driving, I would guess, and the climate in Wisconsin probably helps some. Nice looking car, btw. Looks like the Touring model (by the wheels), same as ours.
It is a base (#2) model that was bought new for my wife's job, rural mail carrier. About 50 miles a day with 200 stops, 6 days a week. We both retired about 3 years ago and planned on an extensive road trip. We bought a new '16 v also a #2 for that, as I did not want to worry for the 3 trips 3-4 weeks at a time, 2 1/2 months total we were gone (25K miles). There were NO issues, and planning another 4 week 8K run this summer. I honestly thought the '08 would be problematic by now, but it's not.
Hmm, I thought those wheels only came with the Touring model for Gen 2. I guess I was wrong. Anyway, it sounds like our life situations are very similar. My wife and I are also recently retired (3 years and 1 year, respectively) and spending a lot of time on road trips between the Pacific Northwest, New York and Florida. The Gen 4 has been mostly sitting while we wait for the Gen 2 to die, but it seemingly will not.
Yes, that's right. You will need to have at least 2 decimal places to see useful values. ~0.19 is good and I've seen values as high as 0.28. I don't know at what point it becomes problematic, though.
