I'm curious why you are so reluctant to take this car into the dealer.
You still have warranty and you stated you have had to jump start this car at least 20 times since you've owned it.

I may be just simple but something isn't right here.

 

In my experience, they sell batteries with different life expectancies - used to be 36/48/60. Now it seems like everything is 72 (at least at Costco, where I bought my last one.)
So it SHOULD last it's rated life, but there's always a bell curve, and how it's treated will change its effective life. Most places will pro-rate it (i.e. 5 yr battery dies in one year, you pay 20% for a new one), so I'd say take it back to autobarn.
Do you still have the OEM? Did it die, or did you just want more CCA?

I've got two miatas - one is all oem and the battery lasts forever. The other one has a gazillion add-on items and has a dark current issue, so it likes to kill batteries :impatient. Sadly I've found it more appealing to throw it on a trickle charger every few weeks than to try to hunt down the current thief.

 

I missed that in the first post. Yeah, time to find the dark current thief (any added electrical items?) or at a minimum get a trickle charger. It definitely will age a battery to be drained fully, then recharged - esp. if it's charged with the alternator (with significant amperage) as opposed to a nice 1-2amp trickle charger.


Note that many folks are a LONG way from the dealer, so it's not worth the trip for a $70 item.

 

Ok, so credit where credit is due, most of you were right, I'm a d-bag, it was the battery after all. When i checked the battery disconnected from the car, it was 0.0 volts!
Since that's nearly impossible with any battery, i'm guessing that when i jumped the battery with the other car, i triggered some failsafe (or poorly designed connection) in the battery itself that caused it to shut down. I didn't disassemble it to see, as i don't like chemical burns.

I'm in new york, it isn't *that* cold out. I'm going to put a meter in the car to see how much is getting drawn when it is off. I do not want to bring it to the dealer for a battery problem as i have an aftermarket mod to my nav system to allow me to inject my own video into the screen. I checked it when i first installed it and it draws 100ma. I think they'll blame any problems on it.
Also, i have a cutoff switch for it which i flip when the car's going to be off for awhile.

Autobarn replaced my battery with a new one for free. Didn't even have a receipt. nice folks.

Thanks to all of you who put up with my silliness.

p.s. while i was at it, i removed the fuse block and toyed with that. fun fact: the 50 amp fuses underneath are not visually inspectable. They must be removed and tested to be checked. Only car fuses i've ever seen that can't be visually checked.

thanks again!

 

This is all of us, not saying "told you so!"
Glad to hear you're back on the road.

If your car is anywhere near an electrical outlet, I'd suggest a battery tender to keep it topped up. The model I got comes with pigtails to attach to the battery so you can just plug in the charger when you use it. As stated, I use this on my often dormant miata. (no affiliation with battery tender, etc)


Did you take pics for a how-to on removing the fuse box?

 

I did not take pics because it is really really unpleasant out. I did, however, add a fairly thorough description to the thread with the bentley picture in it. I feel that it would be easy to follow my instructions and take a look underneath.

 

There is a very good chance that you have an internal short in your battery. That would cause the symptoms of no lights, etc. and if it is still in the circuit when you're jumping it, it would negate the jump start completely.

Disconnect the negative terminal of your battery, put the black clamp on a good ground (alt bracket, or some such) and the red on the positive battery cable/terminal. Your battery will no longer be part of the circuit. If nothing happens, pray for a blown fuse. If the lights come on- and maybe it starts -new battery time.

 

[quote=ericscottf;1958666]Ok, so credit where credit is due...quote]

Just glad to hear your on the road again. I’ve had my MINI over 5 years and this is exactly what has happened to me twice.

 

Glad to hear that everything's working again. It's great that they replaced your battery for free as well.

BTW you're not a "D-Bag" for this, sometimes it hard to step back from a problem and look at it objectively (that's why you asked us). Add that to the difficultly of expressing the details though a message board and you end up in situations like this.

 

I have a NAV-TV setup that plays DVD's wired to the cig lighter and that circuit is dead when the car is off, so maybe you should get a different power source. But I do have a habit of leaving the key in the ignition , pulled out a little and that will kill the car in a few days, dead.

 

Glad you got it fixed.

I figured it really wasn't a fuse.

Great learning experience however. It always pays to start at the simple obovious item first and work your way from there.