Well my Leaf decided to die... Well not the Leaf, but the 12v battery. Kinda ironic I had both the key fob and the 12v battery croak at the exact same time... Go figure.
So after looking long and hard for lithium options I decided I wasn't going to mess with finding a lithium battery with enough capacity to ensure that there is enough reserve. The prices are still just too high on these batteries.
So I shopped around and found Wallyworld had the cheapest and readily available 51R battery in stock so I ran down and picked one up yesterday along with some new CR2025 batteries for the fob.
So I pulled the battery out and put the new one in and took it for a spin. All my crazy dash lights and warnings appear to have cleared on the car. So I think it is happy. Got it home and put it on the the EVSE to have it top up. Then I put it on a battery maintainer charger for the 12v and it was already saying the battery charge was at 90%.
My car doesn't get driven very much, once a week at most, sometimes only once ever 2 weeks. Otherwise it is in the garage. With the light duty I put my Leaf through it appears that it isn't enough to keep the 12v topped up and happy. And I figured out the hard way you don't want to leave the car plugged into the EVSE because it will draw down the 12v battery...
So now I want to put a 12v DC quick disconnect for the 12v battery wire for the battery maintainer. All I am finding with the ring type connectors is only 2 ft long. And I am trying to figure out the best place to be able to run that DC connecter so that I can pull the car into the garage and simply access the cable without having to keep popping the hood to connect the battery maintainer.
I thought maybe the wire could be run down to the grill/air opening, but there is a air dam there that funnels the air into the radiator. It is pretty tight to get down there and not sure if that would be the best place to try and get the 12v wire ran and be exposed to the elements.
The second place I thought maybe it would work would be to somehow fish it into the charging port hatch, but I haven't seen an obvious way to get the wire into there. I am pretty nervous about getting too close to those charging ports under there with power tools or trying to make a penetration in there when I don't know what I am getting into in there.
So I am looking for suggestions on ways to run that 12v DC charger wire so that I can have a simple way to keep the 12v battery topped up since my car sits for so long. Since I just bought the new battery I would like to keep it healthy as long as possible. Any suggestions or ideas? I did some searches here on the forum but not having a lot of luck finding anything. Thanks!