Alley-Kat said:
We never heard back from Old Crow about any resolution on the issues he was having...
Micro-Start / Jump & Go (jump box) experiences
Thanks for the reminder. I did indeed fail to follow up here. The company responded but I was disappointed by the response. To be fair, the product has a one-year warranty and I've had it almost three so it's no surprise the product won't be replaced, discounted or anything. But I also didn't get an answer to my question about whether it was normal for the product to exhibit the symptoms at this point in its life or whether they typically fail in an ok-ok-ok-dead manner (i.e., with no warning) as mine did . (Note: It did charge back up according to the light-bar indicators but I think it's useful life is over).
That experience doesn't change the fact that micro-starters are great to have along. But I do have some thoughts to share...
1. I don't think it's a good idea to go on a trip without jumper cables even if you have a micro-starter or jump box.
2. You may want to set up some type of reminder system to remind you to check and (possibly) recharge your micro-starter or jump-box battery so it will work when you need it.
3. You might also want to keep some kind of record of when you bought it, when you checked it, when you charged it, how many lights it showed at the time and notes on any uses of it.
4. The display lights on a micro-starter battery may at some point fool you into thinking you have a viable backup when you don't. This morning I was surprised to find my XP1 showing all five lights (indicating full charge) a month after I last charged it. But I went ahead and plugged it in to the charger anyway and it dropped to two lights. (Four is the recommended minimum for a start attempt).
5. I believe the useful life of a micro-start battery is somewhere between two and three years (assuming it's not abused). I don't have enough information to say that with confidence. All I know at this point is my XP1 exhibited symptoms of weakness after about 28 months, my two Jump-n-gos seem to be ok at about 24 months, and my brother (who has three two-year-old Jump-n-gos) told me this morning that he recently had his first start-attempt failure with one of his (i.e., it wouldn't turn the engine over on a car he has used it on before).
6. It would be great to have some way to tell when the micro-start or jump-box battery is approaching its end of useful life. The status lights aren't a reliable indicator of battery health. I don't know if that phenomenon of dropping down multiple status lights when it starts charging is indicative of a weakening battery. I used a load-tester on my XP1 for the first time today. Once it was fully charged, I ran the load test and saw the meter immediately drop into the 'weak' range at just over 9 volts. Perhaps I should be load-testing as part of the check-em-and-charge-em routine.
