Fabia Mk 1 saloon, 1.4 16v, 4.25 year old 62 amp hour battery (5 year warranty). The indicator lighton top of the battery was showing black (I.e. discharged), though I suspect that the light is faulty as it only showed green for the first year after battery installation and. despite that, the battery has been OK for years 2-4.

I went to use the car yesterday and the battery wouldn't turn the engine over, but the cabin light and the instrument binnacle would illuminate and the alarm was partially operating.

(Since February, I've only been using the car once or twice a week for short trips. I have found that during the warm weather that cranking on the battery was getting a bit sluggish after a week's disuse - I needed to take it for a burn up the motorwayonce at least once a month to keep the battery alive (That was my excuse). ).

So, on this occasion, I suspected the battery and have taken it out for re-charging early yesterday evening.

Initially, I stuck it on the charger nearest to hand which happened to be an "Old" type with an unregulated charge rate. It was on this for about 4.5 hours. It started-off drawing about 4.5 amps and ended-up drawing about 3 Then It dawned on me that it was a "Maintenance-free" type and should be charged differently so I dug-out the Halfords automatic job and set it to "Sealed" and "Car".. It was on that overnight from 9 o'clock in the evening. I went to bed about 2 o'clock this morning and at that point the across the terminals voltage was showing 15.4v. At l about three in the morning the halfords charger started making such a buzzing racket that it woke me up and I switched back to the old type charger. At this point the "Old" type charger, which has a meter on it, was showing that 3 amps was being drawn by the battery. At 8.30 this morning, I calculated that it might have at least have a half charge, so switched back to the Halfords charger - no buzzing this time. Across the terminals voltage is now 12.97 (Freestanding) and 13.60 (Under charge).

Question. Will I have damaged the battery by using the "Old" unregulated charger ?

Question. How do you tell whether a "Maintenance-Free" unit is good to go ? (You haven't got sight of gassing bubbles in the liquid).

Question. How should you re-charge and maintain a "Maintenance-Free" unit ?

Question. Does it sound like a cell is on the way out or is it just low-use that's delivered the battery to this state ?

Supplementary

I read on the web that you shouldn't allow the battery voltage on "Maintenance-free" types go over 14.4v during recharge and that essentially you should trickle charge them at 1 to 1.5 amps, perhaps over 3 days (In the case of a fully discharged battery) because the name of the game is to prevent excessive outgassing. How accurate is this ?

My view on conventional "Top-up" batteries was that if on re-charge they failed to achieve a minimum of 2 Amps drawn at the end of the re-charge then you could be farely certain that a cell had gone or that the general battery condition was so poor that it wouldn't hold a charge. Does the same apply to maintenance-free ?

Cheers

Nick

Edited 1 December, 201213 yr by Clunkclick

Maintenance free battery to me means that you dont have to top it up with distilled water, charging is not part of maintenance as you have only had to charge it due to the car not being used. My car broke down the other day and the battery started to die so i put it on charge (also a maintenance free) and put it on 'trickle charge' for a few hours and it lives to tell the tale.

If the battery was under a year old id say you have a problem and take it back but sounds like youve had a good few years out of it and it has in a way been abused (not at full charge at all times) so this i can only presume wil shorten the life of the battery, for what it is worth if it does not work go get a new one.

Edited 1 December, 201213 yr by Ema_jane

You can often get at the water caps on these so have a look. If you can top up with distiller water and charge it.

Its now been on charge for 19.75 hours, using a combination of the 6 amp unregulated and 7.5 amp regulated chargers.

According to this article, it should have recharged after anything between 9.5 and 11.5 hours (Bearing in mind that I used different rated chargers):-

http://www.chargingc...s/charging.html

Looks like by accident, rather than design, my use of different chargers may have matched the various stages of charging described here. There also seesm to be a disputed technical issue with regard to the optimum size of output of the battery charger in relation to the size of the battery in Amp hours. Some say 10%, others 25% - I think most of the UK sources I've read say 10% for domestic use. That's what I've always used.

I've established that the Varta battery that I have got is a Maintenance-free battery which conatins electrolyte in the form of a gel rather than the liquid found in conventional batteries. Apparently using an unregulated supply allows charging to occur at voltages that are higher than the maintenance-free gel batteries can accept and may cause the water element in the electrolyte gel to separate into hydrogen and oxygen. In extreme, this can cause bubbles to form in the electrolyte gel - presumably breaking current pathways and reducing the capacity of the battery.

Lets hope in my case using the unregulated supply hasn't caused any bubbles in the gel, though I would immagine you would hear it if that had happened.

Its on the Halfords regulated supply at the moment and showing, under charge, a voltage of 13.6 across the terminals and 13.2 freestanding. So, I'll give it one o'clock and try an install.

The consensus of the on-line advice seems, if after a re-charge of a battery you load the battery for a short period of time (Opinions seem to vary as to how much electrical load and as to to the period its applied for) and then test the voltage acroos the terminals (After a short waiting period) you will get an accurate indication of the state of charge of the battery - a voltage of 12.7 indicates full charge.

Does amaze me though, the top top standard for car batteries today only warrants their use for 5 years. The batteries I had in my 1981 Golf lasted 8 and 7 years respectively !!

Postscript

There seems to be a number of recommendations on-line for these battery chargers, particularly in relation to their use with "Maintenance-free" batteries:-

http://www.ctekchargers.co.uk/?gclid=CNXEkN6b-bMCFcVY3god8nYA2w

There's even a charger there which thjey claim will desulphate and re-condition batteries . . . . priced at £250 Inc VAT.#

And Amazon seem, as usual, to have hefty quantities of last years model at competitive prices.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=ctek&tag=googhydr-21&index=aps&hvadid=8294896809&hvpos=1t2&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=44994306794240694&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=e&ref=pd_sl_213ivgijek_e#

Nick

Edited 1 December, 201213 yr by Clunkclick

You can often get at the water caps on these so have a look. If you can top up with distiller water and charge it.

I desperately need the car for Monday, so won't fiddle - if the immient install doesn't work, I need to get a new battery before COP today.

Nick

Edited 1 December, 201213 yr by Clunkclick

Usually the slower you charge any battery the better it will take it,

A completly flat battery is best charged as low as possible ie 1 to 2 amps or less but one with abit of life in it should be ok charged abit more.

We have a couple of smart chargers at work and there useless, we just usually use the older heavy duty ones on there lowest setting and never had any problems even with the newer style batteries used on stop/start cars

Nick, it seems to me that as you aren't using the car regularly, and when you do drive it, it's only for short trips, that the battery is giving more than it's getting back from being driven, IYSWIM? My advice, if used for short journeys or infrequent use, would be to invest a tenner or so in a solar trickle charger. Leave on the dash, plug into the 12V outlet socket.

http://www.maplin.co...e-charger-98358

http://www.maplin.co...rickle-chargers

I told the neighbour to get one after I got fed up of having to get the jump leads out of the cupboard!

My car sits for a week between each use..............all batteries will lose their charge........and defo replace if over 6yrs old.

As of maintainance free...............just means that you can't add water....still have to charge it up tho!

As for chargers................got fed up of taking battery out of car and then reconnecting and resetting the hi-fi etc.....

....so a 5yrs ago I got a CTEK charger which came with the bolt on battery connector...........all I do is plug the charger in and switch on!!!

These CTEK chargers are the best and are OEM for top end Astons etc.......

this one I have.......

http://www.ctek-chargers.com/?gclid=CM3N6sLX-bMCFefMtAodQGoA3g

comes with the eyelet connector..very good!

Heavily vaselined the terminal posts, and re-installed battery.

Followed the advice on the web regarding taking the "Surface charge" off of the plates before obtaining a measurement of the across terminal voltage. To simulate load I put the headlights on full-beam and ran the cabin fan at full blast for a couple minutes, then turned them off, waited about three and a half minutes, then measured the voltage across the terminals - 12.7v. Spot-on - yet the green ":Life-light" hydrometer on the top of the battery still doesn't illuminate.

Anyway, then turned it over on the ignition key and it started first time. Ran it for fifteen minutes at fast idle. OK. Then took it on a 20 - mile run which included some stop-overs and engine- restarts on the way. Perfectly OK.

I find it hard to believe that it was OK the last time I used it in the middle of last week and that it had lost sufficient juice between then and yesterday, so that it couldn't even turn over the engine yesterday. Its a 62 amp hour battery which is well over the capacity needed for a 1.4 petrol engine, having a cold cranking capacity of 610 amps i.e. in diesel territory. The Haynes Mk1 Fabia manual states that the power requirement for cranking the petrol engines is 1.1 Kw or about 90 amps i.e. half that of the Fabia diesel. So, I would imagine that even if a couple of cells lose capacity, it should still be able to turn the engine over (Different kettle of fish if they actually short-out entirely).

I can only think that its the cold weather that's done it.

But the figures don't stack up.

The temperature difference from last week is only at worst 10 centigrade down on last week - Haynes says that a drop in temp from 20C to freezing loses 25% of battery capacity, so that a temperature drop of 10C should lose you 12.5% of battery capacity or 7.75Ah

.According to Haynes a battery left standing will only lose 1% (0.6 Ah) of its rated capacity per week through natural leakage.

The only other source of loss is the alarm which on past experience consumes about 2 amps a day in idle as far as I am aware, the alarm hasn't been sounding off. So in 9 days you'd only lose 18 amp hours due to the alarm.

Assuming that the battery was only 75% charged when used last week i.e. 45 Ah, and taking away all the other potential losses I mentioned above, leaves you with 18.65 Ah sufficient to producing a CCC of 183 A, that's nearly twice what the Petrol Fab needs to turn the engine.

I think I'll be taking a look at it tomorrow, to see if there are any other losses.

The temperature is due to rise Monday back to 11C, so hopefully the car will be available Monday.

The fact that the green light hasn't come on, IMHO indicates that at least one cell has gone (Presume that the hydrometer can only be mechanically connected to one cell and, from the position of the light, that cell must be in the centre - also remember its usually the cell nearest the positive terminal that goes AWOL), but as said, the excess cranking capacity of this battery will mean that the loss only becomes significant in the winter. If I start taking the car out for extended runs once a week during the winter,maybe I can make the battery to hold out until the annual service next year.

I ceratinly will be digging out a rather large solar panel stored in the loft and installing it on the rear parcel shelf.

I do fancy one of those CTEK chargers - the one that de-sulphates and re-conditions (Eternal life for lead acid batteries - why hasn't the NHS got something like that for me !). See what santa turns up.

Nick

Edited 1 December, 201213 yr by Clunkclick

Does amaze me though, the top top standard for car batteries today only warrants their use for 5 years. The batteries I had in my 1981 Golf lasted 8 and 7 years respectively !!

1981 Golfs don't have power steering that can draw 60 amps when used.

Check that you have a battery warning light when you turn the ignition on, if not, likely that the alternator load wire will be broken which will give you battery charging issues.

1981 Golfs don't have power steering that can draw 60 amps when used.

Check that you have a battery warning light when you turn the ignition on, if not, likely that the alternator load wire will be broken which will give you battery charging issues.

Strangely Haynes quotes the range of battery sizes on the Golf were 27-63 Amp hour. My bottom of the range 1.1 L,"N" model had a 45Ah fitted. Haynes says the alternators ranged from 35-65 (Think mine was 50 or 55). Whilst the respective figures for the Fabia are 36-72Ah and 55-90. If the quoted figures are correct looks like VAG attempted to uprate electrical output and storage spec to deal with the increased demand - may be not enough though. Hence my oversize battery selection.

Battery warning light is coming on .

Nick

Edited 2 December, 201213 yr by Clunkclick

As far as I've seen only the agm batteries have tell. If it has water caps then a distiller top up and very slow charge would work wonders.