On the school run today... I turned the car off and then turned it on again so it only activated the radio (this was only for 5 minutes). I then saw the ABS light come on and I tried to turn the car on fully, and it completely died (Battery is as flat as a pancake).

 

I have no idea why, but the past few days, it had struggled to turn over and was taking more than 2-3 seconds to start (I thought I could sense it was going to die).

 

I'm not sure what is making it die, because I can't see any lights on and not sure what is causing the battery to drain.

 

Any idea? It's the second brand new battery as this happened before (I assumed it was the battery that was faulty), but it's not.

 

Car is Skoda Octavia 1.8 1999 Estate Automatic

Edited 4 April, 201412 yr by Forrepell

This happened to my VRS a couple of years ago turned out to be the alternator.

Edited 4 April, 201412 yr by GAZ911

how often do you use the car and is it for short journeys only?

 

I'd start by checking the alternator

 

But I had this on my rs turbo doing short journeys with radio on lights on heated rear screen etc and was taking out more charge than putting in so eventually was like you thinking batterys were dead