Today, I was tested.

I had a doctor appointment scheduled for this morning at 8a. It’s cold as hell, so I tried to remote start my truck.

It did not start. No lights, no crank, no nothing. I drove the truck 2 days ago and everything was fine. Something must’ve caused it to drain the battery.

I walk out to my truck to see what is going on and the battery is completely dead. I had to put the key in the door to open it, and was presented with no dome light, etc.

I measure the battery with a voltmeter and it’s zero volts. It’s a 2 year old Optima yellow top deep cycle AGM battery. Most batteries won’t come back from being this dead, but I am determined to try.

I go grab my battery charger to see if I can revive it, but I need to run an extension cord out to the truck to charge it.

The garage door won’t open when I press the button on the wall. The screen on the button says “Press the push bar to activate control” but pressing it does nothing. We had a power event a few days ago, which likely caused something to go crazy with the RATGDO garage door controller I use. It’s times like this where I wonder why I complicate my life with this stuff. I was able to use my phone to open the garage door and drag the cord out to the truck.

I connect the charger to the truck and it doesn’t even recognize it’s connected to a battery. After some screwing around, I manage to get it to engage the 75A engine start function, which wakes up the truck. At this point, the alarm starts going off. HONK HONK HONK. It’s just after 7am. This likely wakes up my son and some of my neighbors. I disconnect the charger, which immediately stops the furious honking, because the battery returned to zero volts. I close everything up and head inside. I will deal with this later when everyone is awake and it’s not dark out.

I call to cancel my doctor appointment and after navigating the phone prompts, I eventually realize there is literally no way to speak to an actual person. Pressing 0 just takes you to the main menu, and pressing 6 for “extra help” just reads off the URL to the website and then hangs up on you. There is also no way to cancel the appointment online, because it is on the same day. About a half hour later I get a nastygram from the doctor because I didn’t show up.

At about 9:30a, one of my meetings ends early so I head back outside to try to get the battery charging. I disconnect the battery from the truck so that the alarm doesn’t go off again.

Now the charger just gives me an error saying there is an open cell in the battery, and it won’t charge. It’s not possible to have an open cell in this battery. I try a different charger. The moment I connect the clamp to the positive terminal, the clamp explodes and part of it hits me in the forehead. Apparently single digit temperatures combined with old plastic and a lot of spring tension equals a spectacular failure of the clamp.

I go get the volt meter to see the state of the battery. The battery in the volt meter is dead. Mind you, this is the same volt meter that I used at 7a, and I did not forget to power it off.

I grab a third battery charger (what, you don’t have 3 battery chargers?). It stops charging almost immediately, saying the battery is “Full.” It reports the battery voltage at 5V.

These “smart” chargers are apparently too smart to charge a battery this dead. I need an old-school charger that just applies 14V to whatever you connect it to, regardless of the circumstances. I’ve probably thrown away a charger like that and now I need it.

After much screwing around, I manage to get the first battery charger to trickle charge the battery, or at least it appears to be. I leave it be, and will come back at lunch and see if I can charge it at a higher rate.

When I check on it at lunch, the battery is measuring 12.1V. The “smart” charger finally agrees to try to charge the battery at 25A. I’m going to leave it like this for the rest of the day and check it around dinner to see what the status is. Chances that it didn’t error out and cancel charging as soon I walked away from it are about 0% today.

I can’t wait to repeat this entire process tomorrow morning, since that is when I rescheduled the blood draw and I have no idea what caused my truck to drain the battery.

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