Help needed Connecting Battery Charger - cant get to negative terminal

[cattitude]

Flat battery, need to get the car back to dealership, have a mondeo 2010.

Of course the battery is a nightmare to get to! Dealership is going to put a new one in but for now I need to some how figure out how to get to the negative terminal to hook up the charger. easy to get to positive as just took of front bit of plastic but can someone tell me how to get to the negative.

thanks in advance.

[poppa smurf]

can you get to the earth bolt on the engine that the battery connects to

this will do the same thing

[cattitude]

Unsure, im not all that familiar with the car as yet. I have gone from a 95 fairlane that I knew very well to this.....
Can I earth on raw metal safely???

[poppa smurf]

preferably a direct line to the negative side of battery

can you find the negative terminal from the battery and follow down to where it earths

[aussiblue]

See: http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?t=11357539

[aussiblue]

Check the owners handbook; it apparently has instructions on jump starting.

[cattitude]

I have no problems on knowing how to jump start but as there is no other car near by thats not possible. I just need to know the best negative connection point to CHARGE the battery with a charger so I can pump a bit of life in it to get it to the dealers for a new battery replacement.

[foxtrot3]

Originally Posted by cattitude

I have no problems on knowing how to jump start but as there is no other car near by thats not possible. I just need to know the best negative connection point to CHARGE the battery with a charger so I can pump a bit of life in it to get it to the dealers for a new battery replacement.

Hi. The same connection points for jump starting are suitable for using as charging points....... ie: if you can put up to 200 amp from a set of jumper leads through these connections, 5 amps from a trickle charger is a doddle. Cheers MD

[AlanD]

Hi Cattitude,

Hopefully when you get some charge into the battery, you will be able to start the car. People here have reported problems when the battery fails because the car's immobiliser activates. Suspicion is that this occurs if the battery terminal voltage falls below some threshold.

The main body earth point is a bolt with a peculiar head shaped a bit like a top hat located to the right side of the battery shield on the firewall of the car if you are standing at the front of the car looking rearwards. It has a high current capacity cable terminating there.

You can make an easy connection to that point for charging.

If the battery is dead flat, charging from a trickle charger will take a while, 10 to 12 hours at least.

You are sure that the battery is just discharged and has not failed with one or more cells having shorted plates? If it is a fail condition then I suspect your plan to charge will be in vain.

Good luck. Let us know how you get on.

Regards

[cattitude]

thanks very much AlanD, very helpful.
I managed to stick it on a charge for a few hours and presto it started with no problems, so I am assuming that yes its a dead battery, wont hold a charge.
Goodness knows WHY they make things harder to get to under the bonnet!

[poppa smurf]

well done Allan.......I'm not familiar with the vehicle so I didn't want to mislead

[AlanD]

Hi again,

I should have mentioned this in the previous post.

The Mondeo does not isolate the power (Cigar lighter) sockets when the ignition is off (True for the MA series vehicles, best to check for the MB, MC series)(Thanks to apstar for this bit of data) and so this makes for a convenient place to trickle charge the battery if you plan on leaving the car for a few weeks.

Source one of these http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=MB3523 or something similar and also a cigar lighter plug http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=PP2000. Wire the plug so that the tip is positive and the sleeve is negative.

Note that if you don't want to destroy the plug on the flying lead of the charger module, its a simple job to get an appropriate socket and then wire the cigar lighter plug to it.

Now you can hook up the charger to the mains, plug the cigar lighter plug into a power outlet in the car and this will happily trickle charge the battery without any need to go poking about under the bonnet.

Cheers