Garmaine Staff asked 2 years ago
We have a 2009 Honda Jazz, which we're not using at the moment due to coronavirus restrictions.
We're planning on taking it for a 15-20 minute drive once a week to keep it going, as advised in this useful answer.
But the battery is not in a good state, and I'm worried that our drop in usage may cause it to fail completely, especially if the restrictions are tightened further and those weekly trips are no longer possible.
The car is parked on the road (our garage is full of stuff).
So I'm thinking about removing the battery from the car, then hooking it up to a trickle charger in the garage.
Will leaving the car for long periods without a battery installed do any harm?
My intuition is this is fine (eg I'm used to entering the radio code to reactivate it after battery failure). But on trying to look this up, I'm finding some contrary information: eg from https://www.racq.com.au/cars-and-driving/products-and-services/batteries/battery-myths
If a car is not going to be driven for a several weeks, the battery terminals should be disconnected. FALSE. Most cars have on-board computers that run the electrics, steering, transmission and security systems. These systems require a continuous amount of power to operate. If you disconnect the battery, you might find that these systems don’t work even when you reconnect the battery.