I don’t have a lot of problems with batteries but I do spend the money to make sure I have good ones and with the old cars it doesn’t really make much difference if they are connected or not as they will kick without too much trouble even when left standing for 6 to 12 months.
Most of my cars will get a good run much more often than that so no real problems ever pop up.
If the car is off the road for a long time then I’ll completely remove them so as no leakages can occur.
It’s a different matter for the newer cars, I have a VS Clubsport that eats batteries every year and the local supplier won’t give me warranty because he knows I don’t drive the vehicles.
I have a VZ that sits next to it and it doesn’t have a problem with them at all, it’s one of those little wonders that I’ll never know the reason why.
Even though modern cars don’t ever go fully to sleep the advice I been given is you are better to keep them connected and let them slowly discharge and take the car for a decent run every so often to recharge them then to completely disconnect them.
I also have a trickle charger and a jump starter if I need them.
I find I have more problems with batteries in modern cars that I drive for short distances around town with a lot of stop and starting than I do with cars sitting around doing nothing for long periods.
It’s Holley that recommends the bowls be filled before the car is started otherwise they say it can damage the power valves.
I don’t know what sort of damage they mean as I’ve never had a problem with one other than some of them starting to click with age or because they’ve been left sitting for a long period.
They recommend you disconnect the coil and crank the engine to pump the fuel up that way before starting.
I prefer instead to fill the bowls manually because fuel starts losing its octane after 6 weeks or so and if it has been sitting for a long long time then I want the bowls to be filled with fresh fuel and not sucking up stale stuff that’s been sitting in the lines.
I do a lot of pre-checks on really old engines or ones that have been sitting for some time from coolant, oil, fuel, belts and ignition before starting and that’s why I remove a lot of that stuff when I store a car long term as it’s easier to check them as I refit them and they will last longer packed away..
I 100% agree you need to prelube before starting the engine.
I’m a bit old school about it and do what my father taught me and drop the old oil and filter and replace them then feed a little oil into each cylinder through the spark plug holes and crank it over manually with a breaker bar.
It’s also a good idea to then prime the oil pump via the distributor and check to see if it pumps up through the heads.
Then after the fuel and everything else is sorted I kick it in life straight away and listen in case I need to shut it down instantly as there is nothing worse than hearing the top of a piston come off.
Everyone has their own ways and ideas on how to start them, I do what my old man and a few mates have taught me over the years and I have learnt it’s always going to be a lottery on how an engine will react after not being started for a long time.
Some dinosaurs will start easy and go on to have a happy life and some that have only been in hibernation for a few years will need a rebuild and all you can do is your best to make the initial start less damaging but it’ll always end up being the luck of the draw.
With the newer cars their mechanical components will suffer like the old school do, where I tend to differ with them is I believe because of all the tech built into them they need to have the batteries connected and be run regularly and I guess if I’m around in another 20 years or so I’ll know from some of my own cars and what I hear from other owners if that is true or not.
Mercedes told me a few years back that I was killing my C63 by not driving it enough (about 300km a year) so I now drive it several times a week instead of once every few months and I take it on a few hours drive to Sydney and back every month or so.
Here’s a photo of the mess in the front bowl of my double pumper, I’m almost a shame to show it.
The secondary bowl didn’t suffer anything like as bad as the primary.
The accelerator pump diaphragms were hard, brittle and torn.
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