…and you know replacing a car battery used to be a piece of cake. You’d lift the hood of the car grabbed a couple wrenches, loosened a few bolts and out she came. But today some car manufactures have it hidden so well it’s turned into a game of find Waldo. The first case of find Waldo was a few years ago when I went to the parts store to get a battery for my daughters Sebring. The sign on the window said Battery’s installed for Free, except if you drive a Sebring. Seems the battery on this car is tucked away in such a place that you have to take the front wheel of the car off just to get to it. Wonder what you do if you need to hook up jumper cables. Well last week I went to the Auto parts store to get a battery for my wife’s Escape and ran into the same problem only the reason the parts store wouldn’t replace it for free wasn’t because you had to take off the front wheel. This time it was because of all the stuff you had to take off the engine just to get to the battery which is tucked away nice and neat up against the firewall. Now back in the day the first thing I would do is ask Uncle Mike for help. Everyone should have an Uncle Mike who knows a little bit about everything and at one time was an Auto Technician. Now Uncle Mike isn’t really my uncle, he’s my brother in law who my kids and all the neighborhood kids called Uncle Mike when they were young and the name just stuck. I still call Uncle Mike for help but thanks to You Tube I was able to see just how difficult it was to replace the battery on the Escape. They gave two options both looked time consuming but one promised it was quicker than the other and it was. I had all the tools except for the T-25 Torx Driver. I’m like a what? Turns out it was only a couple of bucks and I needed it to take off the brake fluid reservoir which was attached to the cowl that also had to come off along with the windshield wipers arms. I got to admit the video looked intimidating but the project turned out to be a piece of cake. Not like the cake back in the day but still lot better than all the other crap I would have had to disconnect just to get to the battery which I can happily say I was able to do thus avoiding a call to Uncle Mike or taking it to the local repair shop. I didn’t even have any left over parts when I put everything back together and best of all it started right up. Zoom Zoom!