johnh510

@nta16 Well, the flat battery I mentioned above isn't at all well: On an old 8 amp charger the old flat battery drew about 2 amps, according to the meter on the charger, with the voltage getting from 1. something towards 15 in just a few minutes. So I put it on my CTEK CT5 instead, and left it with "charge" showing. Some hours later there was a warning display on the CT5 I'd never noticed before, and the battery voltage was 8.6 which I think is too low for the CT5 to function. I'd guess the battery voltage collapsed at some during the CT5's charging/care cycle. (I hadn't taken the BM2 battery monitor with me so I have no idea what happened. The BM2 also has a minimum voltage and it forgets if the voltage is removed). Left off charge the voltage the next morning was 6.5, so I'd guess another cell has failed, again. Perhaps I different charger type, or a few hours on the old charger first might have produced a different result, but that method did work on my Rapid which went completely flat during the freeze earlier this year - the key in the drivers door lock was nice and handy to get in, but the passenger side handle for the bonnet was a bit awkward to pull - and the old battery charger, followed by the CT5 did get it back up again. Even to the extent of "stop start" still working now. The original battery in that Rapid is a "Banner" 65A/h Regards, johnH

No, nothing that responsible.

My CTEK CT5 is the basic 3.8 Amp version and has no program selector, it just does what it does. The only clues on the box are three leds: check, charge, and care. Regarding "pulsed top up stage" the BM2 I used to show the battery voltage only samples once every 2 minutes and it doesn't show anything interesting happening. Attached are some BM2 charts from when the battery was still in the Fabia, with some comments. With hindsight it should have been left on "care"/maint charge for a lot longer as the voltage never used to get high enough to stop the warning bong - battery low, charge by driving. Or just driven the car a bit more.

I think you were probably right to have changed the battery - I did ours because of being tired of faffing about... there is no knowing how long the apparent improvement will last on the old battery. 6 years seems to be fair going for a stop-start battery. Your comment about getting a conventional battery going again is interesting to me - my son in law sorned his Mk1 Fabia last year at the start of WFH. The battery is now flatter than a flat thing, I told him it had been left too long, what with the freezing conditions for a month earlier this year. Perhaps I should see what I can do the next time I am "up there"... Regards, John H P.S. The CT5 is 3.8 amps maximum.

I put a Bosch EFB battery on our 2015 Fabia this April (to avoid changing the type from the Moll 59Ah) and during a chat with The Batteryshop I was told that Varta and Bosch batteries are made in the same factory in Spain. (It seems Moll went bust about a year ago, so exact replacement was not possible) Out of interest I put the old Moll battery on a CTek CT5 a few times and tried various test on it: charged up voltage was initially 13 volts, but was down to 12.5 volts in a couple of days, then It seemed to self discharge much more slowly after that - in 15 days it was down to 12.25 volts. The next discharge was into a 21Watt lamp - 1.71 Amps to start with - to get some idea of what the battery capacity was at "end of life". According to the internet the nominal Ah figure for a battery is a 20 hour discharge down to 10.5 volts, and the 21Watt lamp got it down to 10.5 volts in 23 hours. The current had reduced to 1.45 Amps by the time I stopped the discharge at a voltage a bit below 10. So maybe 1.5 or 1.6 x 23 about 33 to 37 Ah remaining, give or take, from an original 59 Ah After a very long charge - 48 hours - the battery voltage stayed up at 13 volts on a self discharge test and 23 days in the voltage is still up at 12.44 The voltage measurement charts were from a "BM2" battery monitor, and the current figures are timestamped snapshots of a digital meter. Battery voltage is affected by temperature, but it hasn't been very hot or cold lately - you can see it on the charts in the afternoon sometimes after a cold night. Draw your own conclusions - I don't know if the really big discharge helped it, or the longer than usual charge, but it does seem to hold voltage better now. When I was charging the car during "lockdown" it was never left on "care" for long, so maybe the battery would still be happy in the car if it had been given longer in "care". (comments from the Skoda garage on the last two services were "battery OK but needs a good charge", or words to that effect.) Regards, John H

PAB567 is the man for updates - there's a very long thread not far away:

Our Fabia is a similar age and has the Device number and hardware number you gave above, but ours has software 0245 and media codec 2101.0.0.10 It has "smartlink". It definitely works with Android auto for "satnav" on the Bolero screen - but it needs the USB lead in, and bluetooth paired to work. I have not used it for streaming. I believe "smartlink" should work with Apple play, but I don't use apple stuff so I can't confirm if it does. @PAB567 will likely know if it will work, and if the missing "0245" software in the display is significant. Can you not take wife and her phone to try it on the car to see if it all works before you buy? Downlink and read the Bolero guide from the link below before you go: https://manual.skoda-auto.com/210/en-GB/Detail?model=Fabia_NJ&edition=05-2016&market=&manualLang=en Regards, John H P.S. edited to add - the guide is a one size fits all for multiple versions and includes a _lot _of stuff which is irrelevant. It's still worth a look though.