Winter in Utah is cold, really cold, and snowy way too snowy. Most of this to my Pao’s dismay, for most of the winter months I’d keep the car parked behind my apartment just praying that the rust would stay away. I would do my best to make sure to run the car every few days so that the battery wouldn’t succumb to the cold tundra that is Utah but alas, I wasn’t good enough at doing it. So about 3 months into the winter months I decided I better be more gentile with the Pao, I got it a nice cover, which if you haven’t done you should ASAP they’re great to have. I put one on the parts page, but you can also find it here.
Then I got my buddy with his big truck to give me a jump, so I could at least detect where my electricity problem was. After looking at the health indicator on the battery and finding that it was still healthy, I thought perhaps it was the alternator? I had heard a few people mention that their alternators had issues, I really hoped it wasn’t that. After driving it around the block about 20 times and trying to turn the key over again after a break it still didn’t start.
Turns out it was the battery, I was able to use a multimeter from Autozone to figure it out. But then when looking at battery replacements within reach people looked at me like a psychopath. The Pao battery that I had in there was from Korea, and had little no to way of identifying a one to one replacement. Plus if you look at the terminal clamps they look like they belong to a lawn mower. the battery is really small. So again I couldn’t figure out what I should do, but then I got a tip from a fellow Pao owner who directed me to Prius batteries, they’re standard size, but reliable and work for the Pao. I got this one from Optima just off of Amazon — great.
The battery works great, but it does require a slight upgrade of your wiring. To get it to fit you’ll need to get new terminal cables which is simple enough.
Here’s a picture of the old terminal clamp it’s as skinny as my thumbnail!
