A few weeks ago, I wrote about the in-process sale of my 1979 Euro 635CSi. On the first day of fall, I’d pulled the car out of storage in the Monson warehouse, brought it home, floated it for sale on my Facebook page for the third time, and this time it sold. The buyer was Noah Teates in Virginia, who remotely selected and purchased it for his son Grove as a car that passed through the goalposts of being something cool and special enough that he’d treat it well, yet not such a rocket that it’d get him into trouble. Life then intervened in the form of Covid for me and a trip to Australia for Noah. I was back up and around in about a week. My to-do list was to get a bent rear wheel straightened, get the new set of 235/45R17 Michelin Pilots Noah had shipped to my door mounted and balanced, and install a heater block-off valve to shut off the flow of always-on coolant through the heater core. Both tasks were knocked off quickly.
Sharkie wearing his new wide rubber. Yes the center caps went back on.
A simple heater block-off valve.
In our back-and-forth messaging, Noah mentioned—twice—that would be great if I could run the car around more and stamp out any obvious gremlins. I responded in all sincerity that Sharkie was a pretty well-sorted car, having been to The Vintage in Asheville three times, road-tripped to Vermont last year, and regularly exercised since. It’s not like the car had been driven into the warehouse in Monson, left there for long-term slumber, and required recommissioning. I’ll admit that my being a little slow during my post-Covid recovery, and that, combined with the seemingly endless amount of work I went through readying my Bavaria for sale to friends this summer (see the five-part series culminating in this piece) probably had some effect on my neither wanting to go looking for things to fix in the 635 nor feeling that it was necessary. So with the new tires mounted, the heater block-off valve installed, and the wire transfer for payment received, I gave Sharkie a quick wash, vacuumed it, then stashed it in my 98-year-old neighbor Jeanette’s unused garage and disconnected the battery. (Speaking of batteries, Jeanette is still driving her 2012 Honda Accord, but puts so few miles on it that the battery occasionally runs down, so I keep it charged for her. Plus, the battery in her “Jitterbug” flip-phone recently died, Best Buy sold her a new phone and transferred her contacts to it, but said there was no way to save her photos. I called BS on that, resurrected her old phone, and saved her pics. She accords me deity-like status, and is thrilled that she can repay me by letting me occasionally stash a car in her garage.)
Sharkie beds in next door for a few days.
This week, things heated back up. Noah made arrangements for he and Grove to fly in on Saturday morning. I was glad to pick them up at the airport. I reconnected Sharkie’s battery, started it, pulled it out of Jeanette’s garage and back into my driveway, and did a few last-minute things like cleaning out the glovebox and putting some unused parts in the trunk. When Noah texted me of their arrival, I almost jumped in the 635 and headed to Logan, thinking how cool it would be to pick them up in it, but the risk-averse side of me whispered that there’s no reason to drive a car that’s been sold and paid for through traffic. And besides, there were two of them, and my E39 has a real back seat.
When the three of us got back to my house, I gave them a walk-around of the car and a quick spin around my neighborhood with Noah driving, Grove in the front seat, and me shoe-horned in the back to show that it was as advertised. We were about to take a second lap on wider faster roads when the car began bucking and stumbling at low rpm. Noah shrugged it off as maybe old gas from having sat, but it had never done this, I knew that something wasn’t right, and directed him to head back to my house. We all got out, I hopped in and tried to re-start the car, and it was completely dead—the dashboard lights didn’t even illuminate.
This one was easy: Obviously I’d forgotten to tighten the negative battery cable when I reconnected it and pulled the car out of Jeanette’s garage. On some of my cars, I never even bother to fully tighten the negative cable and instead do the poor-man’s-battery-cutoff-switch-thing and just twist it on and let friction hold it, but when I checked the one on Sharkie, sure enough it was just flopping like a fish on the beach. I tightened it down, and the car started right up. Wanting to be certain that the stumble was gone, I left Noah and Grove at my house to ogle the E9, the Lotus Europa, and the Elan +2 in my garage while I took a very enthusiastic wind-it-out drive around the block.
The stumble was gone and the car ran fine—obviously it was caused by the battery not actually being connected and the car trying to run only off the alternator—so we came inside the house, passed papers, and agreed that I’d leave my plates on the car for the drive so the EZ-Pass cameras would have something to register on (they’d brought a Virginia temporary tag for the back windshield). I offered that the car’s original 3.07 differential was under my back porch and that they could have it if they wanted it. My son Ethan and I rummaged around under there and rolled it out on a hand truck, and Ethan and Grove hoisted it into a box in the trunk. Noah hopped in the drivers seat to move the car to the top of the driveway to get a photo. He turned the key, and… click. No-crank.
Okay. No problem. I must not have properly seated the battery cable. I grabbed the 13mm wrench, loosened it, rotated it slightly, pushed down, tightened it, and tried again.
Click. No-crank.
“Maybe it doesn’t want to leave you,” Noah joked. But I instantly swung into full-on Hack Mechanic mode, trying to be the guy that I play in these articles. I grabbed the battery post cleaner, undid both cables, scrubbed both clamps and both terminals, put them back on, and tried again.
Click. No-crank.
Crap. Starters do go bad. Please don’t be the starter. Please don’t be the starter. Please don’t be the starter.
I grabbed my little Cen-Tech battery analyzer and connected it across the battery terminals. These digital battery analyzers are wonderful. They take a resistance measurement and use it to infer the sulfation of the battery plates, and from there, the health of the battery. On the Cen-Tech, less than 5 milliohms is excellent. Over 10 milliohms means that the battery is likely toast. Between 5 and 10 is a gray area. The reading was 12.27 milliohms. At least it was definitive—the battery was bad.
Noah, who was supremely non-plussed by all this, peered at the battery, and gently said “Is the date code on that 2017?” I looked down, and sure enough, there was a green “17” sticker on the top of the, ahem, Walmart ValuePower battery.
Busted.
I was livid. As I reflected on it during the following hours, I rationalized that the car had started when I pulled it out of storage several weeks ago, had started when I moved it into my neighbor’s garage last week, and had started that very morning when I pulled it out. I feel about old batteries kind of like I feel about old tires. You know what they say—age is just a number, right? With 13 (well, now 12) cars, there’s just not enough money to replace every battery and every tire unless there’s something actively wrong with them (e.g., a clearly dead battery, or tires with dry-rotted sidewalls and cracked tread). And I wondered if the loose battery cable somehow hastened the battery’s demise. But in that moment, standing in the driveway with Noah and Grove waiting to begin their seven-and-a-half hour drive back to Virginia (and more to the point, with Noah meeting my asking price, buying this car sight-unseen for his son, and having asked me twice to check to see if the car needed anything else), I was beyond embarrassed. I gushed apologies.
Noah couldn’t have been more gracious. “Hey,” he said, “We’ve all had far worse things happen road-tripping unknown cars. Where’s the nearest auto parts store? We’ll pick up a battery and be on our way.”
Where do you find people like this? All around you, if you look.
I jump-started the car, used my multimeter to verify that the alternator was properly charging the battery and that the thing hadn’t died due to lack of charge, threw a spare set of jumper cables in the trunk for their trip (I have four), and sent him to the nearest AutoZone with the instruction that he tell me what the battery costs so I can reimburse him, and that he text me when they’re on their way.
And with that, off they went, far more relaxed than I was.
A VERY understanding new owner and his son.
About half an our later, Noah texted “New battery installed, runs like a top. Thanks again, Rob!”
I was on edge for the rest of the day. But as I settled into bed that evening, this text came in: “Hey, Rob! Just pulled in with 3/4 of a tank left after three fuel stops. Car ran like a sewing machine all the way home. Your plates have been removed. Hope to raise a glass with you at Hot Springs!” I thanked him for letting me know, and for being such a calm good guy about the battery. He replied “It was our pleasure, start to finish. Perhaps another reason why we wrench is the knowledge that no volume of planning and preparation can make an old car boring :^)”
When I sell a car and the new owner drives it off, it’s traditional of me to quote Neil Young and say “Long may you run.” (When I sold my 1972 2002tii “Kugel” to my friends Susan and Jim—the same folks who bought the Bavaria—five years ago, Jim actually brought a guitar, and video’d me singing the song behind the car.) Because of the battery-related drama, I’d forgotten to give Sharkie the appropriate lyrical or spoken send-off, so I’ll do it here. Grove, you’ve got a very cool car. And a very cool dad.
Bye, Sharkie. Long may you run.
[Epilogue: The following morning, I saw that Noah posted the following on his Facebook page. “Today’s milestone: Grove’s First Car. Huge thanks to Rob Siegel for white glove service from start to finish. The car ran like a sewing machine all way home from MA, and no force on earth could knock the smile off that kid’s face.” He graciously did not refer to “the battery incident.” I laughed out loud when I saw a photo of Sharkie’s key on a new keyring with a tag that said “Don’t do stupid s**t—♡ mom & dad.”]
—Rob Siegel
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Rob’s latest book, The Best of The Hack Mechanic, is available here on Amazon, as are his seven other books, including Just Needs a Recharge: The Hack Mechanic Guide to Vintage Air Conditioning. Signed copies can be ordered directly from Rob here.
