After sitting for two days, my battery is completely drained. I need to get my car started. I don't have a battery to connect to the fusebox posts, but I do have a battery tender. I tried to connect it and it didn't work.

I called Porsche Roadside assistance and they said that they would prefer to tow it somewhere, but they would sent someone out to open the hood. They also said that if the key won't come out of the ignition, that means it is too dead for a battery tender/maintainer to work. I have a Sears battery charger as well for my other cars. Should I use the Sears charger? Will the Battery Tender really not work? Is there a recommended battery that I can buy so that I'm not incapacitated like this in the future? Thanks in advance.

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"The Cayman doesn't need any more toys." -- My wife

A battery tender is only used to maintain the battery charge.....doesn't have nearly enough juice to start the car. Have you tried the charger yet? It doesn't have enough juice to start the car either, but it may give you enough to get the key out.

If the battery went dead in 2 days, you either have a serious parasitic battery drain, something wrong in the charging system, or a dead cell battery (my guess).

A dead cell battery can be a dead short in the electrical system.....all the tender/chargers in the world won't do any good until the bad battery is removed and replaced with a good one.

I kinda thought there was a recent thread where a button somewhere below the ignition would manually release the key... could have been dreaming.

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formerly jlambeth

The battery will drain in a couple of days if the key is left in if the battery isn't fully charged to start with and most aren't. It takes considerable driving to keep modern Porsche batteries charged (not just a few mile commute at low speeds). Porsche doesn't recommend rapid charging but if it were me I'd use the Sears Charger to charge the battery and release the key.

You would be correct. There was a recent thread regarding this. Here is the post referring to the manual key release:

key stuck in ignition switch

I don't know if this will work, but worth a shot.

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I just had this happen to me - I was in NYC for 4 weeks, and before I left, I opened the door to the CS and the lights came on kind of slow, and I put on my "to do list before going to NYC" to hook up the trickle charger... the car had been sitting since the last autocross event in July. Well, I didn't get it done, so when I got home and wanted to take the car out the next day to the Croctoberfest DE, the battery was dead. After an all day flight from NYC to Las Vegas, which included several hours in weather delays, I just didn't have the energy to mess with it the night before, so I went out to the DE and instructed, and several fellow CC members were nice enough (Gemars and K-Man S) to let me show them around the track in their cars.

So, back to the subject at hand - the day after the DE, I tried hooking up my Sears charger to the fusebox post and the door strike hoop to open the hood - no dice - so I used jumper cables from the battery from one of my other cars, hooked up to the fusebox post and got the hood open - hooked the Sears charger up (on 10 amp) for an overnight charge, and it's as good as new.

brad

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21-year PCA Member
PCA DE Instructor

I'll do that when I get home. Since the cables are too big to connect to that fusebox, I'm going to have to find another way of connecting them. I don't really have a battery that I can plug it into. Any recommendations on a cheap battery for this purpose?

I took the key out before I left. My wife drove it on Friday, so she may have left something on. I'm not sure what it would have been though. The funny thing is that I drive the car about an hour a day, at speeds up to 80 Mph. I would think that would be plenty to keep a full charge.

Good to know. If the issue persists, I'll make sure that I address that with my dealer.

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"The Cayman doesn't need any more toys." -- My wife

I used a set of full-sized jumper cables - make sure you have the + post pulled all the way out from the fuse box - it does extend quite a bit out from the fuses - the clips on my jumpers are very big, but I had no problem getting it hooked onto the + post from the fusebox when it was pulled all the way out. Then, hook the neg. clip to the door striker hoop and you should be able to open the hood without any problems.

brad

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21-year PCA Member
PCA DE Instructor

beez is correct. Normal size jumper cables will work and there is a nice diagram in the Owner's Manual showing how they are to be connected.

I doubt your wife left anything on that would have caused the battery to fail. The built in overload protection should have shut down anything that can be switched on after two hours. (If the ignition key is removed, loads which are switched on or are in standby mode (such as the luggage compartment light, interior light and
radio) are automatically switched off after approx. 2 hours.) Good luck.

I realized that when I got home just a few minutes ago. I tried to connect the sears charger to the terminal to power it. That wouldn't work either. When I went to clip it on, I realized that it does really extend out a ways.

I saw the pictures in the manual, but I didn't realized that it came out that far. You can imagine that when I only pulled it out a half inch, it left me confused as to how I could hook up full size cables

Thanks for all the replies. I called roadside and they will be out with a battery shortly. Any thoughts on a cheap 12v battery to keep laying around in case this happens again? They have a 12v battery for UPSs for $30 at Radio Smack that I was considering.

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"The Cayman doesn't need any more toys." -- My wife