charging my battery
 

hello all

here's my situation

i am planning on charging my battery this weekend. here is why; i have had my 8 away for winter storage. i have started it up religiously every 1 or 1 1/2 weeks. the last time i started it, the car had a hard time starting. i am afraid if i start it again that the engine would flood and i don't want that to happen.

does the car run the same after a flooded engine has been fixed?
also, is there any precautions i should take when charging the battery? such as my alarm going off or anything like that

i am set to go in for my 10,000 mile check up so im gonna request the battery upgrade and N flash upgrade when i cat her in

pls let me know with the answers to these ?'s

Charge the battery before you attempt to start the car!! If you just started the car periodically and didn't take it out for an extended run, the battery will not have charged enough while running to make up for the normal drain.

If the flood is cleared and new plugs are installed, the car should run as it did before. When charging the battery, make sure you connect the charger cables to the proper battery posts. Also, you are better off using a low-amperage charger (e.g., 1-2 amps) and charging the battery slowly. If you use a higher amperage charger, you should probably remove the battery caps to allow the hydrogen to escape more easily. Leave the hood up when charging and don't have any flame close to the battery while charging.

The battery "upgrade" is not a recall, so you should tell the service people that your engine seems to be turning over very slowly and hardly starting and you think the battery is weak.

I'm old-school and would disconnect the battery before charging it.

Also, a "trickle" charger takes longer but is best for the battery.

roadside assistance had to come and tow my car the other day. i attempted to charge the batterty with a trickle charger, but still "dead"
they tow it to the dealership and fully charge the battery back up so the car now starts, also got the n flash upgrade. however, i am still a little unhappy as to how the car starts. it seems that i still have to turn the key for a second longer before it kicks over.

i thought the flash upgrade corrected this problem.

any suggestions?

i also have a question about the stock battery. even though the dealer had fully charged it, do i still need a more powerful battery for my car. is this something that the dealer will replace or must i buy one on my own?

The Mazda-recommended replacement battery for the RX-8 is an Interstate MTP-35 as mentioned in one of their recent Service Bulletin. You should have requested that the dealer replace the OEM battery with the recommended replacement. The MTP-35 is a much more capable battery with a rating of 640CCA versus the OEM battery rating of about 300CCA.

Since your OEM battery died, the dealer should have replaced it at Mazda's expense, although the dealer apparently is not REQUIRED by Mazda to do that. Some dealers are replacing the OEM battery when they encounter a starting problem such as yours, some are not--as you found out. Had you known about the recommended replacement battery you could have requested it at the time, but now you may not be successful in getting one at Mazda's expense. Print out a copy of the TSB and take it to the dealer and ask nicely for them to replace the OEM battery and perhaps they will do that.

I have not experienced any starting problems myself, but I recently installed one of the replacement batteries in my car at my expense just in case I need the extra starting power at some point in the future. I travel to the hinterland of Québec every year and don't want to have a flooding problem there and not be able to crank the engine long enough to start the car.

Replacement battery TSB link:
http://www.finishlineperformance.com...42-04-1429.pdf

will my car continue to do what it is doing while the factory battery is in there? or is it a must to have it changed. do i run the risk of flooding with the current battery?

That's hard to say for sure. But if you keep it charged up it will probably work just fine. That means periodically--like weekly maybe--connecting a trickle charger to the battery to bring it up to full charge. With some low-amperage chargers you can leave them connected and they will keep the battery at/near full charge. I prefer not to leave the charger connected after the battery is fully charged.

If you do mostly short trips in the car, the battery may not fully charge each time you run the car. So over time the battery could, in that case, run a charging deficit which could result in a weak or dead battery at some point down the road.
Also, keep in mind that if you are somewhere where periodically charging the battery is not feasible or practical, and the car sits for a few weeks, you could run into the same problem.

So in summary, the answer to your question depends to a great extent on how the car is driven/stored, and how cold it gets where you live.