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MG MGB Technical - Help. Flat battery. how to access?

I had left my car for a few days while away on business. However I left the lights on. DUH! The battery is totally flat. Can I jump start (with leads)? or push or tow it? If so how do I access the battery? which way do the leads go on? Should the choke be in or out? Sorry, I am completely ignorant about these things.

Thanks in anticipation.

Alan
Alan Dunlop

Yes you can jump start with leads. The battery is behind the seats!! Lift up the carpet and you will see a black cover, locked into place with spring screws (were they called dzus??),remove and take off the cover. The screws stay attached to the cover.There is your battery. Be careful to attach the jump leads in correct order, and DO NOT touch the body work with live leads - sparks could set off an explosion!!(not likely but you never know)
Hope this helps
Bob (aka The Blue Max)

Alan. Also make sure you know the grounding of the car. From 68 onwards, they were negative ground and, prior to that, positive ground. Best thing to do is simply hook positive terminal to positive terminal and negative terminal to negative terminal. However, some people perfer to ground the donor battery to the car frame/bumper/engine when jump starting. Just make sure the batteries are not cross connected. There is not a great deal of room in the battery boxes for connecting the jumper cables without taking a chance on grounding something out. But, it can be done if one is careful. Les
Les Bengtson

Alan, I did that once at an airport using airport transfers tunbridge wells. Poor staff had to jump my car off three times before I realized that the alternator couldn't supply enough current at idle, and the ignition died every time rpms dropped below 800. You may, for that reason, want to leave the choke pulled out just enough to get the idle up and leave it that way for a while so the battery can get a charge. Otherwise you may have to get jumped off at every stoplight! :-)
Rob Olsen

Be especially careful if you still have two batteries. You can't just jumper across one of them. Place jumper leads on the terminals opposite the series connection between the batteries observing the polarity markings on each battery.
George B.

Thanks for your help guys, I got it started quite easily although the battery cover took about 20 minutes to remove! However.....see 'DISASTER' thread.

Alan
Alan Dunlop

This thread was discussed on 06/11/2002

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