I check under the hood fairly frequently, and the last time I did I noticed one of the battery caps was leaky and crusty. So time for a new battery, because seven years from the factory battery was a pretty good run. When I lifted out the old one there was a lot of yellowy crust in the battery tray, so I used water and baking soda to clean it out. It took quite a bit of water so I was a tiny bit worried about all that water under the hood.

After I had it installed I started the engine and discovered that the parking brake error light was on and I could not disengage the parking brake. No matter how many times I pushed the button nothing would work. I shut it off and took off the fuse box cover to see if there was an obvious blown fuse but there wasn’t. I wiggled and jiggled everything near the battery then got back in the car and tried again. Amazingly, the brake disengaged and everything was fine. Anybody know what that was all about? Water on a connector?