I like a good mystery. So when a dame, claiming to be my wife, came knocking on my office door, I was all grins. Her Escape battery would occasionally go dead overnight. No unusual activity, no witnesses. The dealership was stymied - the battery was fine they claimed, so in their opinion, there must have been a power adapter left plugged that robbed all those electrons.
Parasitic battery drains aren't my thing, so I was thinking of buying a battery cut-off system, when I got the call. The car was dead again. I was getting ready to jump the car, when my wife supplied the missing clue - "Let me put the car in park before you do that." Eh? I asked my next question carefully - "was the car left in drive the last time the battery went dead?" She nodded.
It all came together. My wife's accent - she grew up in Italy - and the Escape was her first automatic. So parking a car in gear... I suppose it would make sense from her viewpoint. An innocent mistake with large repercussions. Park, I told her, was not a suggestion, but rather, a requirement. The battery had not been a problem since.
Case closed.
Parasitic battery drains aren't my thing, so I was thinking of buying a battery cut-off system, when I got the call. The car was dead again. I was getting ready to jump the car, when my wife supplied the missing clue - "Let me put the car in park before you do that." Eh? I asked my next question carefully - "was the car left in drive the last time the battery went dead?" She nodded.
It all came together. My wife's accent - she grew up in Italy - and the Escape was her first automatic. So parking a car in gear... I suppose it would make sense from her viewpoint. An innocent mistake with large repercussions. Park, I told her, was not a suggestion, but rather, a requirement. The battery had not been a problem since.
Case closed.