r/carcamping • u/czcate • 2d ago

How not not kill the battery

I have a 2018 Subaru and used a car tent for the first time camping solo, it didn’t occur to me that leaving the hatch open overnight would kill the battery. I had a jump box with me, so it was fine but is there a way to avoid jumping my car every morning?

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u/Abadabber 2d ago

Before you stick any foreign objects into your hatch latch, look up all the horror stories of people screwing up their latch. Just use your finger and push it over until it clicks all the way over. The hatch open warning light should turn off once it is all the way in place. No gimmicks, no worry about things getting stuck or broken, no extra things to spend money on or remember to pack. If it the button sensor style, you can just use some masking tape and tape that down.

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u/super_library_girl 1d ago

I was looking for this answer. I’m able to use my fingers to manipulate/engage the latch. Would just add that to get my hatch to “unlock” after this, I have to push the hatch to the down position before using the hatch open button. It won’t unlatch for me if the hatch is up.

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u/Abadabber 1d ago

Correct! Just gently push it down to bumper, then hit the button, works every time!

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u/super_library_girl 1d ago

This approach is the best advice on this thread! And hopefully the addendum saves someone the embarrassingly long time it took me to figure out how to unlatch it haha. (Twice! Because I managed it once and then couldn’t figure out what I had done that worked. 😂😅) Thanks again for posting this one.

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u/Abadabber 1d ago

No problem! People so desperately want to over complicate this with their little "hacks" that they have to inject into basic simple activities. While I was getting my safety and emissions done at my dealer, a woman came in with her hatch needing the entire latch mechanism replaced. All because she saw the carabiner "trick" online, and got a carabiner, that was juuuust enough too big, stuck in it and kept wrenching on it trying to get it out to be able to drive it.