Flat battery
- Thread starter Stripy
- Start date
My 2018 battery has been fine, but reading all these posts and absolutely positively needing my van in the cold weather to get to work I thought I'd be prudent and buy myself a Bosch type replacement.
Assumed it would be circa £100...
£350 later
Assumed it would be circa £100...
£350 later
what one did you go for?My 2018 battery has been fine, but reading all these posts and absolutely positively needing my van in the cold weather to get to work I thought I'd be prudent and buy myself a Bosch type replacement.
Assumed it would be circa £100...
£350 later
Don't quote me exactly, I got my local back street garage to fit it, but I think it's one of these - BoschAGM 115 AGM Battery 3 Year Guarantee | Euro Car Parts
I know they got it from Europarts and it was for a stop/start T6
I had to get VERY firm with my local dealer after being messed about following a Moll battery failure.
Nice Battery =]
Have they programmed in (adapted) the new battery?My 2018 battery has been fine, but reading all these posts and absolutely positively needing my van in the cold weather to get to work I thought I'd be prudent and buy myself a Bosch type replacement.
Assumed it would be circa £100...
£350 later
.
what @Loz said:
Charging battery:
Battery recharging or jump start on vehicles with start/stop system:
When recharging or jump starting vehicles with start/stop system,
note the following: first connect charging cable to battery positive
terminal then body earth. This ensures that the battery monitor
control unit - J367- is not bridged. Charging the battery directly on
the negative terminal causes the battery monitoring control unit
to be bridged. The battery data is not collected by the battery
monitoring control unit during the charging process. Then, the
values concerning the battery state and saved in the data bus
diagnostic interface would not correspond to the values of the
charged battery.
Renewing battery on vehicles with start/stop system Note:
♦ Due to higher demands on the deep-cycle resistance, a spe‐cial battery is used in vehicles equipped with a start/stopsystem.
♦ When renewing the battery, note the correct part designation.
♦ Batteries intended for use in vehicles with a start/stop systemare marked “AGM” (Absorbent Glass Mat) or “EFB” (En‐hanced Flooded Battery).
♦ If the battery is renewed, the battery monitor control unit -J367- must be adapted by means of a battery parametrisation
Adapting battery monitor control unit - J367- :
After the installation of a new starter battery or a new batterymonitor control unit - J367- , the battery monitor control unit -J367- must be adapted.
– Connect vehicle diagnostic tester
– Adapt battery monitor control unit - J367- ⇒ Vehicle diagnostic tester.
Some screen grabs from the Autel MaxiSys . . . .
Yes sir, I say they are back street because they aren't a main dealer, but they are pretty good.
It wasn't until after I'd spent my pennies and had it all fitted that I thought about whether I really needed a stop/start battery when my stop/start has been disabled?
Never mind, too late now.
Our Moll battery has just been replaced under warranty - following two call-outs to VW Assist (aka AA, as VW doesn't cover this area of Cumbria). The cost of the new battery ( a Varta), would have been £451.84, if not covered by warranty. Ouch!
Also, the dealers (Hadwins of Lindale - nice folk to deal with), removed the windows, which were leaking (as usual with Transporter window/Kombi vans), cleaned out the gutters and drain holes under the windows, re-tested for water ingress, and pronounced them OK. They showed me it is possible to remove the windows yourself, using a screwdriver top and bottom. I think I'd rather they did it!
Re: fuel consumption, they tested our DPF pressures and said everything was running 'as designed'. I got 32pmg on the trip there and back on our T6 204 manual, (according to the trip computer) driven in precisely the same way as their T5 102 courtesy van over the same route - 42.5mpg. OK, ours is heavier and higher, being a campervan, but that tells me the T6 2.0 litre is a mucky, old-fashioned engine which needs almost constant interference to keep its emissions within Euro6 levels - hence the lousy consumption. At least it drives nicely!
Also, the dealers (Hadwins of Lindale - nice folk to deal with), removed the windows, which were leaking (as usual with Transporter window/Kombi vans), cleaned out the gutters and drain holes under the windows, re-tested for water ingress, and pronounced them OK. They showed me it is possible to remove the windows yourself, using a screwdriver top and bottom. I think I'd rather they did it!
Re: fuel consumption, they tested our DPF pressures and said everything was running 'as designed'. I got 32pmg on the trip there and back on our T6 204 manual, (according to the trip computer) driven in precisely the same way as their T5 102 courtesy van over the same route - 42.5mpg. OK, ours is heavier and higher, being a campervan, but that tells me the T6 2.0 litre is a mucky, old-fashioned engine which needs almost constant interference to keep its emissions within Euro6 levels - hence the lousy consumption. At least it drives nicely!
Pocc
Member
Looking back at this post, there's a few things to consider as well as out and out faulty batteries.
First of all I think a lot of people are expecting a lot from their batteries and do not understand that a battery is not an infinite store of energy.
To this end I have a bit of sympathy with VW who refuse warranty claims on batteries that have in their mind been deep discharged. Please don't shoot me without reading the rest of the post!!
Travelvolts is quite right. When someone drives their van - no matter for how long - there is no indication whether you're parking the vehicle up with the battery 80% charged or 100% charged; no problem if you're hopping in it in the next couple of days; but if your parking it up for weeks or god forgive months when it's at the bottom end of it's capacity - then you're screwed.
As an example, I have one customer who has a tracker on his vehicle which 'pings' the telemetrics company every half hour and therefore is never fully dormant; he also has a replacement android head unit which is a constant drain - oh and he uses his van for short journeys usually just at school holidays. As the company that sold the van to him, legally it's my problem that he can't start his van when he wants to. With an understanding of the demands he's making on the battery and charge system I can honestly say that it will never work as he expects it to and as a business I am having to carry this liability.
But this is where I can also see it from the customers perspective too.
As a non teckie (he's a languages teacher) my customer can't understand why his brand new Volkswagen van won't start when he wants it to. Afterall, he had no problems with his 20 year old van starting when he left it for months on end - so why should a new vehicle give him so many problems? Surely there must be a fault and as he bought the van from me it's down to us to put it right.
Telling these customers about intelligent alternators, charge cycles, regenerative braking, battery ECU's, current sensing shunts etc etc would be a bit like him telling me how to propogate the past pluperfect tense whilst conjugating an imperfect verb (no - I don't know what it means either
) All of this isn't going to help my customer when he drives it from my workshop to his storage site 5 miles from here and then tries to start it for his Easter break in 4 months time. So we are left with a mode of use that by design of the emissions system can't be resolved.
I don't think this circle can be squared readily as the manufacturers are taking the line that we as consumers are just not using their product correctly - we used to have a joke flowchart when I worked for the manufacturers that the first question to ask a customer was 'have you used the vehicle?' and if the answer was 'yes' then you should reject any warranty claim.
Personally, I lament the passing of good old fashioned regulated alternators that just churned out 14.5v regardless and didn't care about the position of the polestar in Sagittarius. The savings in emissions and fuel from these 'intelligent' systems are almost negligible (incidentally it's another soapbox topic of mine calling it 'intelligence', deep blue struggled to derive intelligence with a football stadium of processing power, yet we're told we have intelligent systems tucked away in the back of an alternator? What we have is alternators following a program not intelligence). Yet look at the downside on reliability and customer dissatisfaction of these so called 'intelligent' systems.
And before I get trolled here for being a Luddite - it's not that I've asked for a Carburettor for Christmas yet - just a charging system that works in more modes of operation than a preset scenario for passing a regulatory test. Incidentally, see my post on injection systems for the request to have carburettors back please - preferably with whitworth bolts
VW are not alone in this battery charging issue - the Transit can only sit for around a week or two without fully discharging the battery and Ford mention this in their handbook specifically as a breach of warranty terms. Perhaps what we need is Volkswagen to 'fess up' and include this in their handbooks as Ford do?
One area where forums like this are excellent is that the likes of Graz don't have to accept the stock answer from the dealer 'It's the first time we've had this problem' whenever any problem arises and for that reason perhaps if anyone else has a refusal from VW on warranty on T6 batteries they could print the 3 pages of this post and attach it to their small claims case and see if the dealer will consider the claim then
First of all I think a lot of people are expecting a lot from their batteries and do not understand that a battery is not an infinite store of energy.
To this end I have a bit of sympathy with VW who refuse warranty claims on batteries that have in their mind been deep discharged. Please don't shoot me without reading the rest of the post!!
Travelvolts is quite right. When someone drives their van - no matter for how long - there is no indication whether you're parking the vehicle up with the battery 80% charged or 100% charged; no problem if you're hopping in it in the next couple of days; but if your parking it up for weeks or god forgive months when it's at the bottom end of it's capacity - then you're screwed.
As an example, I have one customer who has a tracker on his vehicle which 'pings' the telemetrics company every half hour and therefore is never fully dormant; he also has a replacement android head unit which is a constant drain - oh and he uses his van for short journeys usually just at school holidays. As the company that sold the van to him, legally it's my problem that he can't start his van when he wants to. With an understanding of the demands he's making on the battery and charge system I can honestly say that it will never work as he expects it to and as a business I am having to carry this liability.
But this is where I can also see it from the customers perspective too.
As a non teckie (he's a languages teacher) my customer can't understand why his brand new Volkswagen van won't start when he wants it to. Afterall, he had no problems with his 20 year old van starting when he left it for months on end - so why should a new vehicle give him so many problems? Surely there must be a fault and as he bought the van from me it's down to us to put it right.
Telling these customers about intelligent alternators, charge cycles, regenerative braking, battery ECU's, current sensing shunts etc etc would be a bit like him telling me how to propogate the past pluperfect tense whilst conjugating an imperfect verb (no - I don't know what it means either
) All of this isn't going to help my customer when he drives it from my workshop to his storage site 5 miles from here and then tries to start it for his Easter break in 4 months time. So we are left with a mode of use that by design of the emissions system can't be resolved.I don't think this circle can be squared readily as the manufacturers are taking the line that we as consumers are just not using their product correctly - we used to have a joke flowchart when I worked for the manufacturers that the first question to ask a customer was 'have you used the vehicle?' and if the answer was 'yes' then you should reject any warranty claim.
Personally, I lament the passing of good old fashioned regulated alternators that just churned out 14.5v regardless and didn't care about the position of the polestar in Sagittarius. The savings in emissions and fuel from these 'intelligent' systems are almost negligible (incidentally it's another soapbox topic of mine calling it 'intelligence', deep blue struggled to derive intelligence with a football stadium of processing power, yet we're told we have intelligent systems tucked away in the back of an alternator? What we have is alternators following a program not intelligence). Yet look at the downside on reliability and customer dissatisfaction of these so called 'intelligent' systems.
And before I get trolled here for being a Luddite - it's not that I've asked for a Carburettor for Christmas yet - just a charging system that works in more modes of operation than a preset scenario for passing a regulatory test. Incidentally, see my post on injection systems for the request to have carburettors back please - preferably with whitworth bolts
VW are not alone in this battery charging issue - the Transit can only sit for around a week or two without fully discharging the battery and Ford mention this in their handbook specifically as a breach of warranty terms. Perhaps what we need is Volkswagen to 'fess up' and include this in their handbooks as Ford do?
One area where forums like this are excellent is that the likes of Graz don't have to accept the stock answer from the dealer 'It's the first time we've had this problem' whenever any problem arises and for that reason perhaps if anyone else has a refusal from VW on warranty on T6 batteries they could print the 3 pages of this post and attach it to their small claims case and see if the dealer will consider the claim then
Interesting post and I can't argue with you on the content. The problem seems to have become much more acute when they ditched AGM batteries for EFB. I think that that vehicle manufacturers were sold a dummy with the idea that EFB are as good as AGM in a stop/start application. I remember back in the early 2000s when Fiat/Peugeot brought out the new version of the Ducato/Boxer. These were famous for flat batteries when left for a few weeks and as an awful lot of them were getting converted to motorhomes/campers that is exactly how they were being used. They even had info in the handbook back then warning that if the vehicle was to be left the battery should be disconnected to prevent discharging.
I think we all have to face up to the fact that if we want all this high tech stuff in our vehicles then we have to also adapt to how we maintain them and start looking after the battery in the same way that we should be checking tyre pressure, oh, what's that? we don't check tyre pressures regularly either? I rest my case.
I think we all have to face up to the fact that if we want all this high tech stuff in our vehicles then we have to also adapt to how we maintain them and start looking after the battery in the same way that we should be checking tyre pressure, oh, what's that? we don't check tyre pressures regularly either? I rest my case.
Totally agree with @Pocc comments above. When I used to own a full size motorhome (Burstner A747), if it was parked for any length of time, it was plugged in. If you're luckly enough to have a Van/Camper as a second vehicle and not a daily driver it's no doubt a sensible idea to have it on a trickle charge when it's parked at home or elsewhere. If you ride a motorbike you'll no doubt be charging your bike over the winter.
Pocc
Member
Agreed Travelvolt - yes, AGM's being replaced by EFB's is a cost cutting exercise, but an EFB can't take the number of discharge cycles that an AGM can and hence we suffer with reliability.
I remember the issues with the sevel products too as we were building ambulances then. We had to replace a lot of the standard batteries with Varta batteries and that resolved the issue. I still replace the Sevel product starter battery if I do a conversion as it's just not worth the hassle of sending a vehicle out with a battery that I know isn't fit for purpose.
VW aren't the worse here for cutting cost - just replaced my 2016 Subaru battery which has stop/start and a believe it or not a standard open cell battery from the factory - couldn't believe they didn't upgrade the battery for stop/start to at least an EFB or AGM.
Seriously considering fitting a master switch to the starter circuit on this guy's campervan as he literally drives every couple of months to the lakes for a long weekend (probably about 50 miles each way) and then parks it back up for the next term of 8 weeks and hence I don't think will ever get it to work as a park and forget.
Incidentally travelvolt - my wife tells me that she doesn't need to check her tyre pressures anymore as a wobbly line appears on the dashboard when they're flat
I remember the issues with the sevel products too as we were building ambulances then. We had to replace a lot of the standard batteries with Varta batteries and that resolved the issue. I still replace the Sevel product starter battery if I do a conversion as it's just not worth the hassle of sending a vehicle out with a battery that I know isn't fit for purpose.
VW aren't the worse here for cutting cost - just replaced my 2016 Subaru battery which has stop/start and a believe it or not a standard open cell battery from the factory - couldn't believe they didn't upgrade the battery for stop/start to at least an EFB or AGM.
Seriously considering fitting a master switch to the starter circuit on this guy's campervan as he literally drives every couple of months to the lakes for a long weekend (probably about 50 miles each way) and then parks it back up for the next term of 8 weeks and hence I don't think will ever get it to work as a park and forget.
Incidentally travelvolt - my wife tells me that she doesn't need to check her tyre pressures anymore as a wobbly line appears on the dashboard when they're flat
Faulty batteries aside and responding to your statement quoted.
I think it is your responsibility as a salesman in this regard, to set the right expectations and mitigate yourself from sole responsibility.
If you are going to supply him with a vehicle with this kit you should be able to boil down the limits of operation and reset his expectations or upsell him other kit like solar or plug in charging to allow him to operate in the mode he was expecting.
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