Mark-Surrey

I called Skoda today to book my 1.5 DSG in for its 5-year service, and they also informed me that it’s now recommended to change it after 140K miles. It was a very pleasant surprise, considering it’s only done a very low mileage

No, I changed it on December 13th

For those of you who were wondering whether my battery really was reaching end of life, or whether it was perhaps the BM2 battery monitor itself which was draining the battery, here’s the answer, from a screenshot which I took this morning in the BM2 app. You can see that since I changed the battery a couple of days ago, the daily drop in voltage is significantly less than it was with the old battery. I haven’t driven the car during the previous 2 days. The temporary dips in voltage were when I simply opened the car door, in order to pop the bonnet open.

Thanks @Kenny R! All sorted now, with your kind assistance

Thanks for your sound advice. I just checked, and you are absolutely correct. They have connected both the battery monitor cable and the CTEK charger cable to the negative battery post. Can I just attach the negative CTEK charger lead to one of the posts underneath the metal bracket where I would normally attach the crocodile clip? From what I can see, the CTEK lead is currently attached to the negative battery post using a secondary nut, so I should be able to move it without affecting anything else with the battery itself.

I just had the new battery installed today. I’ll monitor the voltage level over the coming days and weeks to see whether the battery discharges at a slower rate than the old one, which was losing between 0.1 and 0.05V per day, when not being used. Below is a screenshot which I took this evening, for the past 15 days. It was at about 12.29V this morning, before I took it to the garage to have the new battery fitted.

I ended up getting a brand new battery fitted by my local independent garage. It was £170 including fitting, for a Varta EFB battery. They moved my BM2 battery monitor to my new battery. The new Varta battery even has a recess on the top which is the perfect size for the BM2 battery monitor! They also fitted the cable for my CTEK battery conditioner to the battery, so I can connect the CTEK device more easily, without having to mess around with crocodile clips.

I had another look at the CTEK instruction manual, and there’s a separate section with more info on the Recondition cycle. It says “Choose the Recond program to add the Recond step to the charging process. During the Recond step, voltage increases to create controlled gassing in the battery. Gassing mixes the battery acid and gives back energy to the battery”.

It sounds like most car batteries typically last 3-5 years, so I guess it’s not surprising that mine is starting to lose performance. Does anybody have any particular recommendations on best brand or type of battery for a Skoda Karoq? When I plugged my car reg into the Halfords website, it proposes either Halfords own brand, or a brand called Yuasa, which I’ve never heard of before. Both of them are EFB type. The Halfords own brand is £122.99, the Yuasa is £159, plus fitting cost of £27.00. I was expecting to see battery brands like Varta or Bosch.

I recharged the battery last weekend, using my CTEK charger. It has been in the garage all week apart from Tuesday, when my wife used it for a couple of short journeys of 10 minutes each, and a couple of 30-minute journeys. When I checked the BM2 app last night, it was showing the battery level having dropped from 12.62V (“OK”) last weekend to 12.26V (“low power”) this weekend. You can see the battery level progression in the attached screenshot. The battery voltage is dropping by around 0.03V to 0.05V per day. Does this kind of drop in battery performance over the course of a week mean that the battery definitely needs replacing, or is this typical of what a battery would normally lose per day? The “Cranking test” last night was showing “Low cranking voltage” of 9.27V. I have put it back on charge with my CTEK charger again today. I’m slightly confused by the comments about the “Recondition” cycle on the CTEK charger. Why would CTEK be recommending to do this once per year, if it’s bad for the battery? Is it really completely discharging the battery? According to the CTEK manual, this stage comes AFTER stage 6 ie. after the battery has been fully recharged. If it was completely discharging the battery, I would have thought it would do this BEFORE it recharges the battery, wouldn’t it? Please forgive my ignorance, if these are all dumb questions. I’ve never had to change a car battery before, so I have never paid any attention to this issue previously. I previously had a diesel BMW with stop-start functionality for more than 6 years, and I never had any problems with it, but most of my journeys in that car were more than 30 minutes each, and it was used almost every day. Our other previous car which was used mainly for short journeys (a Toyota Verso), which we kept for more than 6 years, also never gave us any problems with the 12V battery, but it didn’t have stop-start functionality, so maybe that’s the difference compared to our Skoda Karoq which replaced the Toyota Verso.

I just checked the CTEK user manual. Under the setting for “AGM” option, it doesn’t list any other types apart from AGM. So I’ll just stick with the standard / normal profile for car batteries. But I noticed that there is also an option for “Recondition” mode, which it says should be used after deep discharge, to maximise lifetime and capacity, with a suggestion that this should be done once per year. I have never used this program, in the 3 years since I bought this CTEK charger. I’ll give it a try next weekend, to see whether it makes any difference.

On my CTEK MXS 5.0 battery charger, there is a specific setting for recharging “AGM” batteries. But I have just been using the standard car battery setting. Should I be using the AGM setting for an EFB battery? I have no idea what these terms refer to!

It says EFB on the battery. It was almost completely discharged a couple of weeks ago, after using it only infrequently, and only for short trips. But I have recharged it since then with my CTEK MXS 5.0 battery charger/ conditioner. The Skoda breakdown assistance guy said that the almost complete discharge was likely to have reduced the future performance of the battery somewhat

I checked it this morning, and it’s now showing 12.62V. Is that the level where a 12V battery in reasonable condition should be?

I just unplugged the charger now. I noticed the voltage drop significantly, just after I unplugged it. It then started increasing again slowly. I’ll see what voltage it shows tomorrow morning. Without this BM2 device to see what’s happening to the voltage in real time, I would never have been able to see what actually happens when you use a battery charger

It’s still connected now. I charge it through the CTEK 12V socket adapter/dongle inside the car

What’s the highest voltage a healthy Skoda battery would reach, when it’s fully charged? I’ve had my CTEK battery charger / conditioner hooked up to it this afternoon, and it’s currently showing 14.26V in the BM2 app on my phone.

I’ve just tried it. Our Skoda is at the far side of our double garage. It didn’t connect when I was outside the garage at the opposite side. But it connected as soon as I opened the garage door (regular door, not where the car itself goes in and out). I measured it with my laser device, and the car bonnet was about 7.5 metres from where I was standing.

Thanks for the tip! I don’t know why I didn’t think of that in the first place! I had a spare M6 nut in my garage, which I used to attach the BM2 terminal. There’s a plastic flap over the positive battery terminal, and I had to cut into that with a Stanley knife and fold it back a bit, in order to make room for the BM2 terminal to protrude. It’s all working fine now. Once I had actually attached the terminals, it was literally a 2-minute job to download the app, and connect to the BM2 via Bluetooth.

Hi. Hoping that somebody might be able to help me. We rarely use our Skoda Karoq any more, so it spends a lot of time in the garage. A couple of weeks ago I got lots of different warning messages pop up on the screen when I tried to start it. So I called Skoda breakdown assistance. Within minutes of arriving, they diagnosed the problem as being a low battery (which interestingly, seemed to be the only warning message which was NOT popping up on the screen!). I heard lots of good things about the BM2 battery monitor, which you just connect to the positive and negative terminals of the battery, and you then connect to it using bluetooth on your mobile phone, and use an app to see the state of the battery, get warning messages when you're near the car if the battery is low etc. So I bought one of these BM2 devices, and I tried to install it today. I was able to fit one of the BM2's terminals to the Karoq battery terminal which is closest to the front of the car, by loosening the nut on the battery sufficiently to slide the terminal of the BM2 into place and then tightening it again. But I just couldn't figure out how to attach the other BM2 terminal to the Karoq battery terminal which is furthest from the front of the car. I loosened the nut, but there is a formed metal piece which prevents you from sliding anything in behind the nut. The clamp of the battery lead seems to be sprung so that it pushes the nut against this formed metal part. Do I have to completely disassemble this clamp component? I was hoping to not have to completely disconnect the battery, but ended up loosening the nut that it disconnected anyway. I then got all kinds of warning messages when I tried to start the engine again. Fortunately I remembered what the Skoda breakdown assistance guy told me a couple of weeks ago. You have to turn the steering wheel as far as possible one way and then the other, in order to reset these warning messages.

There aren’t any letters before that. But there is a separate line for “Variant”, which is described as “ACDADAX0”. Does this mean anything?

Thanks for the clarification. I’m thinking of changing our Karoq to an EV within the next couple of years. I might end up switching it before it reaches 5 years old, to avoid the whole discussion of whether to get this cam belt changed at all.

My V5C (log book) document shows the “Engine Number” as 610885. Is this the “Engine Code” you referred to?

I couldn’t see how to remove the plastic cover to access this part of the engine. Is there another way for me to know whether my car is affected by this issue? It’s a 19-plate, 2WD, 1.5 litre petrol engine, TSI, DSG automatic gearbox, in SE-L trim, registered in the UK in June 2019

I did indeed make a similar post on a different forum, just to try and share the knowledge. I’m also putting a link here to somebody else’s post on Briskoda, as I think it was this post which prompted me to go ahead and give this a try. As you can see from the post by oldaaman on 31st July 2020, he confirmed that the part number of the kit which I used was indeed normally intended for putting a skinny spare in a 4WD model, which apparently doesn’t have a wheel well due to that space being required for the Haldex hardware. But as the 2WD model does have a wheel well, the depth of that wheel well plus a skinny spare equates closely to the height of a full size spare wheel in a 2WD. Because this kit was officially only meant for a skinny wheel, the tubular support piece in the centre of the wheel isn’t tall enough for a full size wheel. As you can see from the other post, some people have experimented by extending it with additional tubing. In my car, I just filled that wheel cavity with lots of junk, which provides some additional support to the boot floor.