I have 2013 "Justa" Cooper hardtop. I'm going to need to disconnect the battery for various mods in the near future but was wondering, besides, physically loosening the 10mm nuts on each terminal and lifting them up and out of the way of the battery posts, is there anything I should take care to do in order to not have any problems once I reconnect? I mean, besides probably losing the current time on the clock, will I lose any other settings such as radio or bluetooth pairings?

I've seen various 9V battery powered contraptions for sale as "memory savers" for when a battery is disconnected, but do those work with our cars and are they even safe to use? In one instance I will be removing the airbag to replace the steering wheel and if I use some kind of saver device as described above won't that defeat the safety purpose of having no power to any circuits of the car?

Am I thinking about this too hard?

Thanks in advance!

 

Had mine off a few times. Nothing more than setting the time was an issue.

 

Thanks Dan! I guess I'll forgo the "memory saver" dealey.

 

Yea they don't work on our cars anyhow.. Haha. The key has to be on for the cigar lighter to be active... The saver would be dead in seconds.

 

Do they have a similar tool they use at the dealership for when they have to disconnect the battery? I mean similar in function, just not plugged into the lighter socket.

 

Dealers use either a laptop/scantool to download the car's critical memory functions and presets OR - they can use a battery jumper device that hooks into the OBDII port to keep the memory active (its fused, with a 5a max limit)..

 

I did some poking around today and came across this:

http://www.autozone.com/autozone/acc...er=220035_0_0_

Not a bad deal for $40 as long as it doesnt take up too much space in my garage.

 

Before disconnecting the battery, lower the windows a little bit so you wont have any issues with opening/closing your doors.

 

Thanks for the advice, white3. I usually leave both windows all the way down amyway in such a case so i can reach into the car if needed.

If I were to use an OBD plug "power saver" would it pose any risk maintaining that minimal power to the car when disconnecting an airbag circuit such as when removing the steering wheel or front seats?

 

Same here.
Though the few times I left windows up, I never had any issues opening/closing doors with batter disconnected.

You can not rule out that possibility.
Which is why I would NEVER use any battery tender devices when the safety steps recommend to disconnect the battery.

Reprogramming the clock is way easier than ducking an airbag !

a

 

Good point. Well if the power saver is only going to help me with loss of clock settings, I most likely won't go out of my way to get one at this time. If the car has to be totally without power for safety's sake, so be it.

 

I had my 6-year old battery disconnected for ~2 months while I was swapping N14 engines. After the new engine fired up, I only had to reset the clock. Somehow the radio settings were preserved (used to get erased on my other cars when you disconnected the battery).

a

 

Good to know.