I am dying to take out my ride bu the battery is dead on the C5. I have a charger but I am new at this. How do I charge the battery? Is there a spot to clip to for the neg clamp?

Thanks all!

 

uhh....

ensure you do not have your red and black leads touching eachother
plug your car charger into the outlet
connect the red to the red terminal
connect the black to the black terminal

watch it for a few hours and the chargers display then let her go for the rest of the day

on older batteries, i would loosen the individual cell-tops to prevent gasses from... i dunno, building up?

on such batteries id top up the cells with DISTILLED Water Only

check the manual, your mileage may vary...

 

Red is + or positive....neg or - is black, or that can be attached to somewhere convienient on the motor.

 

When I hook it up it just clicks and the light under the hood just blinks. Is it supposed to do that? Just doesn't seem normal.

 

Any ideas my fellow vette owners? Maybe I should get a boost from AAA?

 

how long have you had the charger on the battery? what kind of charger do you have? If your batt is totally DEAD, it will take more than just a few minutes to get enough cranking amps to turn it over.

 

just as I turn on the charger it starts the clicking, lights flicker and the meter jumps around the charging window. The charge I just got from Lowes. The model is a Schauer. The directions say to put the neg post clamp on a piece of the frame and the pos post clamp on the + on the battery. Where does the neg clamp go?

Just dying to get it out on the road....

 

You may not be getting a good ground. Try just putting the pos+ to the Red Post on Batt and Neg- to the Black post on the batt. Make sure what settings your charger is set to. If your charger has a 6 volt setting this could be your problem. needs to be on 12 volt.

 

SLOW DOOOOOWWWWNNNNNN there cowboy!!!

Unless you are using a booster charger that will actually put SEVERAL Amps (as in more than a couple HUNDRED!) out to your battery, you will not simply put the little clamp thingys on the battery and expect it to start. It doesn't work that way...

Relax and let her charge over night... Tomorrow she will fire right up and you'll be happy...

In the future, depending on what charger you bought, keep it charged with a small trickle (1-2 AMPS total) charger that will cycle on and off according to if it is fully charged or not... Schumacher makes one for this purcpose and it's very cheap.

I wouldn't recommend jump starting it either... ask a friend about showing you how to mess with your battery so you do it safely and you will have less worries in the future... Be safe!!

 

I know it will not start right away but I am scared it will hurt my baby making those clicking sounds.. Sounds like the locks on the doors are opening and closing. Guess I will giv'er a try tomorrow. Day is shot and it was so nice out. Just frustrated now!!

 

You are going to have to let the charger sit overnight so it can build up enough of a charge to kick the car over. They you need to take it out for a nice long drive.

 

I just had the same thing happen when I was getting my car ready to drive last week. Even though I had a float charger on it since december when I parked it, the battery was dead and I mean DEAD. When I put my charger on it in the car I got the same clicking sound you describe. It must be a solenoid somewhere opening and closing. The underhood light also got really bright. I didn't want to fry anything so I took the battery out and recharged it on my workbench for two 5 hour sessions, reinstalled it and everything is fine. The float charger shows output voltage but didn't do the job. It's a Harbor Freight model and I'm going to get a new kind as I don't want this to happen next spring. Anyone have suggestions for a resonably priced float charger?

 

might be a good idea to pull the batt cables off while you are charging it over night. if the cables are off you wont hear that clicking noise on the locks or whatever else is making you nervous.

 

 

Okay, the basics.

Red to the + (red) battery side and black to the - side of the battery. Don't ground black to the frame.

First check you are on 12v charge (not 6volts) and see if you don't have mulitple charging rates on the charger... ie. 4 amp & maybe 10 amp, even possibly 30-50 amp.

4 amp is a overnite trickle charge. Best for the battery and a good deep charge.

8-13 is a regular charge rate and takes about 1 1/2 hours to get a good charge. I would losen the top caps for this charging rate, or higher.

30 + amp is a charging/starting booster rate and is only used when temporarly when starting the engine.

What's happening with the clicks is your battery is very dead and parts of your electronics are coming to life - sort of. They are at the in-between stage of not quite working properly. These clicks are also indicating to me your charging at a very low rate cuz these componets are sensing a current from your charger and it's much lower than the normal output of a 12v battery. Nothing to fret about though they will cheer up as the battery charges - so for now, just turn up the radio - the clicking will go away. Actually the clicking should only be momentary lasting a very few minutes. Your battery acid will bubble (slow boil) when charging. The higher the rate of charge the more violent the bubbling. That can result in explosion, fire of just bubbling over. None of these are beneficial to your corvette, or the electronics under your battery tray. So loosen, or take off the top caps.

Chargers are reversing the current in your battery and basically pulling off the ions deposited onto your lead plates and putting them back into the acid suspension.

You should be able to start your car after charging at 10 amp rate for about 1 hour - even if very dead. Suggest your first stop is to get a new battery and find out what is causing your current drain in storage. If you replace your battery (assuming we're talking about a C5) suggest you consider one of the dry cell battery's that can't leak. Your cells also may have dried out. Distilled water is best, but I never have any so I just add tap water. DO NOT overfill - just cover the lead plates... if you take it to the top, it will boil out and like I said before vettes have some sensitive electronics under the battery tray. If you hear clicking when trying to start that's just the starter trying to rotate and engage the flywheel, but it's telling you there "I'm trying, there's not enough battery power to work yet".



Cheers

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There's only one - Battery Tender brand, or Battery Tender Plus. Everything else is not as good quality. You must rely on this equipment to accurately detect when your battery is full and stops charging. Any other brand that I've tried boiled the battery dry. These units are reliable. Try Ebay.


I have two motorcycles, a boat, a RV, an electric start generator and my vette all hooked to them. Don't try and save money on this item it's too important it is a quality and true "tender" not just a trickle charger.


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