Graham Butcher

No, not sponsored at all, merely trying to show @automassthat as he has had this ongoing problem now for at least 16 months and despite have now having not one new battery but two and keeps doggedly clinging onto the notion that is battery related even though he has posted a photo of the battery test which done under a load and still reading a voltage of 12.55V which is good and indeed the battery tester shows it as good on the display.

Not quite that easy to do as you need to use a specialised clamp meter to measure DC current and there are only few on the market and tend to fairly expensive and also the various control units will continue to talk to each other I expect even when the car is not in use. You also should not use a normal digital multimeter on a car unless you actually know what you are doing. By that I don't mean that user is going to blow bits up etc, but that because digital meters have input resistances of 10M ohms and more. They are perfectly capable of giving misleading readings.

@lol-lol I can agree with you on the Citroens having driven a few of those and also the C5 which also used the same setup, it's like a magic carpet ride in those lovely beasts, the brakes did however take a bit of getting used to, you only to had to touch those rubber buttons, and you were feeling the massive stopping power they gave you. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember that part of the dreaded "B" promise was that they could then reduce the VAT on gas and electric and that promise was never kept, and then people wonder I don't trust politicians

Please could you take photos of the camera itself now its installed to give an impression of how it looks externally and where you located the camera. I ask because I might do the same thing and on the horrible Qashqai I had a for a couple of months I was not impressed with the camera setup on it. It looked on the screen to be giving a really decent view of the area behind the car, but in reality it only showed approx the last 18" before you hit what ever was behind you, total crap in my view.

I really think you are chasing the wrong culprit here, it has been changed now twice and has been tested, you really do need to investigate what else is going on with the electrics on your car. It would be lovely if it was something as simple as the battery but given the above and even with the Halfords link, which you and I are not happy with their performance, on this occasion I think you rule out that they have continually made a mistake with regard to your battery. The common link here is that you still cling onto this thought and appear to be resisting seeking a thorough check of the car with some serious testing kits and skills by someone with the right tools. If you don't take that step, you're going to be having this problem happening time and time again, it has already been a real pain in the butt for you.

Because this problem has a habit of reoccurring and the reported apparent OBD11 intermittent misfiring issues and not being authorised warnings etc, I think there are other underlying issues and because there are so many control modules in the modern car that depended on the correct functioning and communication between them using the cars network, that I seriously recommend booking the car in for proper checking and diagnoses / repair. This video may help to understand the complexity and will also extra equipment that the experts have, which will leave the OBD11 behind in the dirt. You can also get bad scan tools and the ones in this video is way more powerful that a OBD11 can be. After market parts also are not equal to the OEM parts and can cause further problems Curing a misfire. Fake parts causing error codes 6 garages and 1 year later the problem is still there.

I think it might it have been an optional extra as mine doesn't have one either, instead it has the dreadful ParkPilot.

Oops, my bad I missed the last sentence, I was so focussed on the dashcam cutting out when I the car but not on the indoor power. 😭

Would not like to be standing in that wicker basket, I like to have something a little more substantial between me and nothing but a sheer drop 😀.

Well, I thought you were simply referring to the post that you clicked on the "quote" tab, in which I never actually mentioned a short circuit. That was in another post to the OP a day before so confusion resolved. I still dispute that would blow the cars fuse as the 5v supply is derived from an electronic power supply consisting in basic terms of a primary 12v side connected to the car's fuse and a secondary side 5V connected to in the case of the OP, a dash cam and in my case when my car did nearly catch fire, a mobile phone. As the fault was/would be seen on the 5v portion then the 5v part of the electronics would happily continue pumping out 5V at whatever current it could muster until the electronic components in the 5v section expired as the fault current that would be seen in the 5v section would not be seen to the same magnitude on the 12v side. So using the Ohms Law, lets for the sake of discussion say that the dash cam normally takes 130mA, so thats 0.13A @ 5V = .13 x 5 = 0.65 watts on the output side and assume the whole process is 100% efficient, which it won't be, that equates .65wats / 12v =0.054A being consumed from the 12v battery and assuming the fuse is rated at 5A it is therefore going to take a lot more for that fuse to blow. Now lets assume that the 5v side suddenly sees an overload of 50 times its normal current flow due to a short circuit close to the mini USB socket on the dashcam, that means that the cable is now carrying a current of 6.5A and using ohms law, Volts times current = watts. So that's 5v x 6.5A = 32.5Watts. So 32.5 watts at 12 v = 32.5 divided by 12 = 2.708A, still way within the 5A rating of the fuse, so the fuse would still not blow. Now if we factor in the losses because no conversion process is 100% efficient, so let's say that it is only 30% efficient, and we look at the those calculations again, we get the following:- The healthy circuit's 5v side remains the same so that's 5V, .13A and .65watts and the 12v side equates to 12v, .65/.7 =.928Watts and the current then becomes .928Watts / 12v = 0.077A Under the 30% efficiency but with 50 times factor of increased current on the 5v side, the 5v side is as before 5v x 6.5A = 32.5Watts, but the 12v side now has to have the losses added to it the 32.5W becomes 46.428watts and the current is 46.428/12=3.869Amps and still within the 5A rating of the fuse so still not going to blow. Now if we could put a fuse in the 5v circuit, inside the plug along with the 12v to 5v convertor and rate the fuse at 2A then yes that fuse would blow and protect the circuit from a fire risk. Some of those 12v power plugs do have a lower fuse in the centre spring-loaded contact which is on the 12v side, but the cheaper ones don't and by the OPs own admission, the dashcam is only a cheap one, so probably does not so is therefore completely at the mercy of the cars fuse, of which I am pretty sure is a 20A rated one to handle a air compressor being plugged to inflate the tyres will have a pretty big surge current when the motor starts up.

Oh no, if you look at that website and in particular if you subscribe to it, you will see the data from each station for each of the items monitored be they PM's and CO2 etc, all tabulated for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and for a rolling full 12 months and then for 4 years. It is not gimmicky website, it is full-blown scientific fact gathering website for statistical data and analysis by the scientific organisations. You can test part of this yourself, select a station that you want to see the readings for EG, I have selected the one near me and the results can be seen here AirNet Sensor Data Quality Validation Service (aqicn.org) and it will allow you to look PM10 and PM2.5 for the 14 days and also some of the data gained by that station over the last 4 years and that data is also downloadable as a CSV file. As I said before, it is a serious scientific website, not some clown sitting in his bedroom pranking the internet nerds. I'm not trying to stir up things or etc, just making it clear that I'm not at all convinced by all these claims of air quality being responsible for up to 4,000 Londoners or anyone else across the UK loosing their life, and providing the link to a live international website that people can look at the evidence in a bit more detail, if they so wish, or they can just pretend it's a hoax or whatever, its no skin off my nose, it's up to each person to formulate their own opinions. I'm not going to attempt anyone to change their minds, but if there are other people who are interested in checking is they are being lied to, then those people might find this website useful as a fact-checker.

True it is not a desert for chargers, but it does add on an extra 30 to 40 minutes onto the day when you have already had a very long day with around 6 hours driving on top of a full 6 to 8 hours in these meetings. Plus of course the time taken to actually locate a charger that is not being used and also one that is actually working. I was doing that journey in a VW Passat diesel (manual) and at that time (Euro 3 engines) I could and often did twice a week and a full tank used to allow me the whole trip once, then some shorter ones around Essex in the week and then all the back to Birmingham again on the same tankful. I would then fill up round the corner from the factory before hitting the M6 again to come home.

Yeah well, I have yet to be convinced about the air quality aspect, especially when the air quality website shows the air quality is fine and does not pose any health risk, it did many years ago and there were indeed 4,000 people who lost their lives due to the air quality, that was back in 1952 and yet the London mayor is actually claiming that is case of today. This article relates to 1952 Great Smog of London | 1952, Cause, Deaths, & Facts | Britannica. This is the link to the air quality website, which I think is funded by the World Health Organisation and is worldwide. Air Pollution in World: Real-time Air Quality Index Visual Map (aqicn.org) By interacting with the map can clearly see areas of concern including countries and by careful use of the map you can zoom right in to street level in detail and cross referencing the locations with Google Earth maps at street level you can very often see the monitoring stations and in particular where the air intake is located in very close proximity to known sources of bad air quality and have very little to do with road transport or indeed transport of any kind. For instance you have to ask if the air in London is so bad, why did TFL pay hundreds of thousands of £ to University College London to produce a custom report to back up their claims when it were true, all they would have to is to direct people to the air quality website which they could do for free?

Where does the OP say that piece of information, all any of us can do is to work with the information that either the OP posts freely or in reply to various questions we ask and their reply. Also, they posted a photo of the battery tester showing it as being good.

No it does not mean the alternator is faulty, battery is being charged on car a with healthy electrical system but it will always charge at higher rate just after starting the car to replace the energy you just took from it to start the car with. Once it has replaced that power it will drop to just a few milliamps in order to keep the battery fully charged and as you switch on more things like lights, radio, wipers etc then the battery get a higher amount charge rate to compensate for increased demand from the battery.

Yeah, I was not trying to say 680 miles non-stop, but saying that if doing long trips, like Chelmsford to Birmingham and back like I used to do on a regular basis for business meetings, then that kind of driving could result in 680 or so miles to the tankful, as opposed to short trips in town/city with stop/start nature of town driving and the slow uneconomical speeds. I have seen my trip computer showing a range of 870 miles a couple of times since I acquired the car, but conditions have to be just right for that to happen.

You should without a doubt input the correct info regarding the battery, the important 2 bits of information you need to worry about are the AH rating, is it now 65, 69 or 75AH? And the serial number, the maker's name is not important at all.

Because of all the varying reports/updates you keep posting saying this or that is or was happening and the way that you say the OBD11 is performing or not etc, the battery has been tested a few times and they claim it is OK, nothing seems to be constant. Well that's completely, in almost of screenshot of your OBD11 it shows that you have 1 faulty control units, which control unit is it that it keeps reporting? It seems highly unlikely that the battery is faulty, a battery with a 5-year warranty is not likely to popping its clogs after 1 year and 4 months, so I think you can almost certainly rule that out of the equation. I also think that having a bigger battery is not going to cause you problems. If the battery they fitted was too small, then yes, that could possibly cause you some problems, especially if there was something that was still taking power when the ignition was off and the car was just sitting there overnight etc. Now one thing that you have not made clear, but I take it as being true (as maybe do others) is that this started happening over a year ago and the car was left for sometimes while you were maybe on holiday, you came back to find the battery was flat? Then Halford's fitted the current battery, and then the history repeated itself, and you again came back from a holiday to find a flat battery, is that correct?

True, when I filled mine with diesel the other day £73ish my trip computer was telling me that if I was doing longish trip without stop/start like you get in towns I had a range of 680 miles, when they can replicate that with EVs with a recharge time of just 20-30 minutes we might just have a chance of changing the world.

The answer to that question is yes. Think about how many filling stations there are currently for ICE vehicles, and they can be filled to the brim in 5 to 10 minutes including paying, and then think about how long it would take to do the same with EVs. What about people living locally, they may only use their cars locally, but they should not have to drive far to be able to fill up if they can't charge at home.

You say you saw him doing coding, did he actually code or did he just plug it in and check something out? If he coded something, did he remember to tell the tool to "do it" or "save it" and then more importantly, did he then switch off and switch on again and check the coding was correct? I still have no faith that simply swapping the battery for what he claims is the "right one" is going to cure your issues with the battery going flat. You have other underlying problems with your electrics, and it desperately needs an expert to thoroughly go through the system and find the real problem.

Just maybe you need to read and understand what I've written. I've never said that I was a bus mechanic, I said I did my apprenticeship at the local bus depot. I was employed as an auto electrician but as there was no specific formal training for auto electricians I had to go and do at local colleges 8 years of electrical engineering and also learning to be a trainer. Furthermore, I could have become an electrical engineering consultant with the qualifications I gained during those 8 years. I never said "short circuit" anyway, and as I said for the record, the wire in my own car was glowing red-hot and smoke was coming from it, and it burnt the leather on the car seat BUT it did not blow the fuse protecting the circuit. The voltage on the power lead was 5V as it was powering a mobile phone, just as the dashcam also only requires 5V. Very few plugin items these days actually work on 12V, if they did then the chances of the protective fuse actually blowing are far greater, but with a converter in the circuit, as far as the fuse is concerned, it is still operating within its design parameters. The converters should be better designed to shut down the output circuit if there is excessive current flowing in the output or secondary circuit, but they don't and even if they did have such protection, electronics themselves are also known to fail as well. But for the sake of explanation, if the equipment being plugged into the socket is a mobile phone, or a dash cam that uses as its means of connection to the phone/dashcam/portable satnav/ tablet etc then yes the wires in that cable are very small (good luck trying to get normal car wiring cable sizes terminated into such mini, micro or even type "C" plugs) and add a lot of resistance into the circuit when heavy currents are flowing through that cable. That resistance is going to restrict the overall current flowing and as the wire gets hotter, that resistance gets higher. The cable will and does get red-hot and glows like the element of an old style electric fire. The glowing wire is perfectly capable of starting a fire inside the car. Oh, as for the fuse being 10 times the rating of the one in question, I think you will discover, the rating of the fuse for 12v power outlets is going to be around 20A if you look at the fusebox its normally printed or embossed on it somewhere, hence why I used 20A as the example.

I'm sorry to have to say this, but you do have to consider either a dealer's service centre or, as @ordshas said, an auto electrical shop. This has been going now far too long and there is a real possibility that it could cost you far more in the long by trying to clutch at straws, you clearly need someone trained in auto electrics to look at it for you.

That is also assuming that the correct fuse is in place or has NOT even been bypassed previously. I nearly had a nasty fire in my old car which was 100% as original, but a power lead plugged into the 12V power socket developed a fault and the wire was actually glowing red-hot, smoking and almost set the leather seat on fire, but the fuse did not blow, so it is not hyperbole at all but is a real possible situation. I think that the 12v power socket is backed yup with a 20A fuse, which means it that will allow 30A to flow for a long time and a dashcam power cable is not capable of withstanding 20A even, it will glow red-hot but will NOT blow the fuse. This is why I say that a little knowledge is very dangerous in the wrong hands, as it is simply not true that a 20A fuse will not allow more than 20A to flow because it will blow if more does flow through it. Firstly you have to understand what "Ohms Law" is and how it works. Wire adds in resistance, and that resistance can glow red-hot or white-hot, i.e. a bulb, but that heat can and does cause cars to catch fire, even bad connection i.e., dirty connections can also cause fires. See the chart below, the 60A fuse needs to see about 2 times its 60A, so 120A to flow before it will blow quickly. In fact, it will happily allow 40% more current to pass indefinitely without blowing, hence why fuses in buildings have been banned for a long time and circuit breakers are now mandatory because they will blow far sooner than a fuse will. The 60A fuse will as the graph shows carry 100A+ for a really prolonged time, and the cable connected to it will more than likely be getting toasty and the insulation can breakdown. Hence, why I advised automass to seek trained professional help as he is clearly out of his comfort zone here. I'm not as I'm a retired electrical engineer and electrics are not a thing to take lightly, it carries some real potential to really spoil anyone's day.

I refer you back to the points I mentioned in an earlier post of mine regarding the drive belt may be slack, or a bad connection in the wiring somewhere, may be the charging regulator is damaged or indeed the alternator could be toast. There are many other things it could be, remember you were having the OBD11 flagging up a misfire etc, then it was saying it was not authorised etc so it could even be a fault in the bus wiring that connects all the ECU's in the together in order to make the car work. There really is only way that you can certain as to what the real problem is and that is to book the car into your local Skoda service centre and have them thoroughly investigate the problem with all of their diagnostic devices which are way better than the device you have. There is no easy DIY solution to this type of event without the right tools and the skills that these people have and years of experience.