Good Samaritan Scott Hourie is a pretty popular guy around Fort Saskatchewan this morning, having spent the weekend boosting cold-sapped batteries for stranded neighbours. Since Hourie first responded to a Facebook post asking for help starting a car with a dead battery on Thursday morning, Hourie boosted at least 85 people that he met on Facebook, and another half dozen folks he spotted stranded roadside.
One thankful woman with a newly jump-started ride dubbed the volunteer sparky saviour an “Arctic Angel,” Hourie said.
“I’ve been around machinery and vehicles, me and my son dirt bike and I snowmobile. Obviously, I’m not a mechanic, but I can work my way around a vehicle, especially in these types of situations,” Hourie said. “Not everyone has that ability or has that option to learn about vehicles, so there was a lot of people that I could take five minutes and give them a quick understanding of how the battery, the alternator, and the starter all work together to start a vehicle.”
“When you plug in your block heater,” Hourie explains, “it heats the block of the engine, it doesn’t do anything for the other components of the vehicle,” recommending motorists use of a battery blanket in times of extreme cold to help insulate this critical component.
“A lot of the newer batteries are [Absorbed Glass Matte and] GEL batteries,” Hourie said. “When that GEL turns to molasses, it can’t circulate within the battery, that way the alternator can’t pull enough power to crank the starter over.”
Hourie said since Thursday he raised more than $300 which he intends to donate to the Fort Saskatchewan Food Bank on Tuesday.
Below: Image of a boosting operation in progress, provided by “Sparky” Scott Hourie.
