Battery problem

[rum4mo]

Well it might just be time for that late 2009 Ibiza SC to be having a laugh at my expense!  I have replaced the engine coolant sensor, cleaned that area up and added in some coolant to replace what has been lost - a bit more than I had expected due to the O-ring seal escaping without me seeing it, so I spent some time confirming that there was not an old O-ring still in the housing!

 

Anyway, refitted all removed fuses, refitted the heavy red lead that supplies most of the car, waited 1 hour, current drain was 0.00(ish)amps, waited another hour, current drain was 0.00(ish)amps, checked again with the DMM set on 300ma, current drain is 4.5>8.5ma, so if things remain like that I will not have anything to worry about - or is this just the beginning of another "no fault found" condition period in that car's life? 

 

Car left unlocked with bonnet on first catch so I'll see what tomorrow morning brings, in the meantime I'll share a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau with wifie and accept this little break from torment that this car provides!

[Clunkclick]

No fault codes showing. Sounds horrendous.

 

The stuff on the net that I have read indicates that a normal drain, after leaving the vehicle for an hour, would be 50 milliamps (0.05 amps). The fact that you managed to reduce drain below this value might suggest that one of the actions you performed today did the job. But which one ?

 

Also, IMHO, a drain value of zero would seem suspicious, given that the on-board immobiliser and possibly an alarm should be operating. I'd check the connections on the things you unhooked. 

 

At least, I've got known duff component(s) in the heater area/HVAC and a fault code, which may or may not be the cause of the drain . At least that's something to zero in on. And, what's more, the nature of the drain, rapidily varying between 0.15 - 0.45 amps, that I'm measuring at the battery terminal, would presumably be the  type of characteristics to keep the "System awake" . That said it could be anything from a fault component on a board, to an arcing relay, switch or broken wire.

 

Given the involvement of the ignition switch and electrical control unit in so many of the circuits (According to the current flow diagrams), I'm wondering whether these may be involved in both issues discussed here.

 

But what is really apparent is that the diagnostic system is deficient probably both in the number of measurements it takes and limited scope of the conclusions it comes to, in that it cannot conclusively identify the actual location and type of a fault, only the location where the fault code originates from.

 

What's more the fault detection and reporting system isn't at all  proactive or user friendly.

 

When a measurement is consistently going outside normal operating values it should be showing in the instrument binnacle, no matter how minor or ancillary the function of the sub-system so that the user is made aware and can choose whether to take action.  But the guiding philosophy in the system design seems to be to wait until a minor issue leads to degradation in other components and causes a major component failure which inconveniences the user ! 

 

With driverless vehicle operation on the near horizon, then the current fault reporting system has got to fall well short of what is required for safety ?

 

For all modern cars with the double din display unit,  you'd think that the vehicle should show a list of subsisting faults every time the ignition is switched on or off - I doubt if they do. 

 

Further, because the fault reporting is component based (And I'm presuming that its mainly output values of components) there's no higher level heuristic analysis of the fault done on board, where the tools of statistics be might be applied to good effect, per the Google voice recognition/translation and medical diagnosis models. Let's hope the motor manufacturers pull their collective finger out and do something along these lines, 'cause the system they got at the moment is shiiite !

 

 

N

Edited 5 December, 2016 by Clunkclick

[Clunkclick]

That (no. 11 in batt box) one is a permanent 12V for the radiator fan control module, on your car. No harm in checking that that isn't misbehaving though.

BTW, the alternator exciter wire has no voltage on it except when ignition is on or engine running, to the best of my knowledge.

As regards Fuse 11, I was working on information in this reference:-

 

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/248036-battery-fuse-box-what-does-each-fuse-serve/?p=2910316

 

N

[Clunkclick]

Oh dear !

 

As an aside, looks like there isn't any entry in HMG's published programme governing the transition to driverless cars which concerns the determination of the standards for on-board diagnostics and the thresholds at which these work  - I would have thought that this is essential. Are we  to conclude that this determination will be done outside the public gaze by the jolly ol' manufacturers ?

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/401562/pathway-driverless-cars-summary.pdf

 

 

N.

Edited 5 December, 2016 by Clunkclick

[Breezy_Pete]

As regards Fuse 11, I was working on information in this reference:-

 

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/248036-battery-fuse-box-what-does-each-fuse-serve/?p=2910316

 

N

Well it is part of the air conditioning system, because the HVAC module is one of the things that controls the fan control module (FCM), the radiator thermoswitches being the other.

 

I was merely being more specific, in the spirit of helpfulness.

 

The current flow diagrams show it feeding pin 1 of the 6-way connector on the FCM.  Having disembowelled one of these, I can confirm that this is the feed to the coil of the relay that operates the radiator fans at low speed. Labelled 86a here:

 

Edited 5 December, 2016 by Wino

[Clunkclick]

It would appear that  Caveat emptor applies on both sides of the equation - when giving and receiving.

 

N

[Breezy_Pete]

Too cryptic for me.

[sepulchrave]

Too cryptic for me.

 

Me too.

 

 

It would appear that  Caveat emptor applies on both sides of the equation - when giving and receiving.

 

N

 

You're obviously not happy, you just need to figure out why you're uncomfortable with that feeling and try and get used to it.

[Clunkclick]

Bake off sonny !

 

N

[rum4mo]

Clunkclick, remember when I was "saying" low current draw, I was quoting 0.00(ish)amps - I was using the 10amp range of my Fluke for that so seeing roughly zero was "good" and seeing 0.11amp was "bad".  I later got a value for that 0.00(ish)amp reading by changing to the 300ma range as I now trusted that I was only going to measure low currents and that 0.00(ish)amps ended up being measured as 4.5>8.5milli amps - which I believe is roughly what VAG workshops are aiming for.

The original workshop report for that car, when Western SEAT Edinburgh first looked at for me back in end May/start June 2016 was:- "checked for battery drain, found drain of 0.1amps, traced fault to steering angle sensor (G85) fault, replaced sensor etc, after 2 minutes amp draw at 0.005amps. All ok".

So, I'm guessing that the service desk's customer report quoting "2 minutes" is probably wrong - maybe should have read 2 hours, but the 5milli amps is what they were aiming for so with what I've read elsewhere, the target sleeping current drain is roughly 5milli amps - which conveniently ties in with what I've found.

All I've done this morning is to check the voltage across the battery and using that as a rough guide, there is no excessive current draw at the moment and it looks like there has not been over the past 20 hours as it is 12.67V.

[Clunkclick]

Could it be that the disconnections you made yesterday and , perhaps, the order and combination in which they were made,  have reset one or more modules so that they accept the new coolant sensor ?

 

I would have hoped that the number of times the battery has been out of mine,the same would have happened, but then I have an error code on my system as well as one module (HVAC - mod 8) not reporting, I can't expect a reset if part of the system is out of order.

 

Reference your point on software upgrades, it might be worth me reminding the dealer to check the ECU for that - in the past there's been at least one occasion, when they've failed to keep it up-to-date - only discovered when i visited another dealer, when away from home. The timing of the update you refer to would be within the first 10 years of life of my car, so, I would have hoped that Skoda would have done the same as SEAT.

 

My target for parasitic drain today would be to attain  the situation I experienced when the car was new. 

 

Then, if the car was left unused with the doors locked and the alarm and the immobiliser set, then the 60 amp battery would go totally flat in a month.

 

So working backwards that's 60 AH divided by 30 days a month = 2 Ah per day loss.

 

And dividing  that 2 Ah figure by 24 hours gives 83 milliamps per hour.

 

Presently, the drain is 450 milliamps and the battery is totally drained in about 6 days.

 

N

 

Nick

Edited 5 December, 2016 by Clunkclick

[Clunkclick]

This  is the ready-reckoner I have been using for the voltage drop measurements:-

 

http://www.autonerdz.com/yabbfiles/Attachments/HowtodoParasiticdraintestacrossfuses.pdf

 

 

 

And, so far, the testing has revealed that only Fuse 3 (5 amp, mini fuse, Diagnostic power supply, air conditioning system),  out of all the fuses in the cabin fuse box,  has a voltage drop across the fuse amounting to 40 millivolts. Using the look-up table this voltage would fall in the range corresponding to a draw of 0.24 amps.

 

Given that the car's total  parasitic draw measured at the battery negative terminal is 0.45 amps, then it is clear that there is another source of drain somewhere.

 

Its probably going to be worth my while to cycle the voltage drop tests again, in case I missed something during the first pass.

 

 

N.

[Breezy_Pete]

I guess you mean 4mV? The look up table you linked only goes up to 11.

 

Nothing plugged into the diagnostic socket while you were measuring?

[Clunkclick]

I guess you mean 4mV? The look up table you linked only goes up to 11.

 

Nothing plugged into the diagnostic socket while you were measuring?

Sorry, I meant 4mv.

 

Nothing plugged-in to the diagnostic socket.

 

Ignition off. Drivers door open (Courtesy light switched-off).

 

N.

[rum4mo]

Well maybe I have just sorted this problem out with the late 2009 Ibiza SC, as the car is partially locked up and the red LED flashing (driver's door not locked and bonnet lid just resting on first catch), this morning I checked the battery voltage, it was 12.64V so looks like car systems are asleep and have not taken much out of the battery over the past 24 hours! Started car up and everything seems to be working okay, took it for a short 5 mile run, stopped it, opened bonnet and checked battery voltage = 12.63V, checked battery drain while all controlled systems were awake, battery drain = 177milli amps. Waited just over an hour and checked again, battery voltage = 12.70V and battery drain = 4.65>4.74milli amps - so I'd think that indicates that at the moment, the BCM or on board power supplies controller is doing its job okay.

 

Any comments that I've made about BCM needing a software patch or re-flash does, as far as I know, only concerns SEAT Ibiza SC 6J manufactured late 2008>2009 - maybe, if that is really true, it is due to SEAT's supplier, remember while the top level manufacturer will be same for all these cars BCMs, each marque tends to source through a local division of that manufacturer (job share?) and maybe it was only the local division in Spain that only supplies the SEAT account that messed up the programming of the early batch of these BCMs - when Spring returns I will once again think about approaching my next local SEAT dealer about this in case it was the root cause of my battery drain with only a noisy/faulty engine temperature sensor.

Edited 6 December, 2016 by rum4mo

[Clunkclick]

Glad to hear you got yours fixes. Its not something you need where you are and in the middle of winter - motor manufacturers and service agents seem to have difficulty grasping this concept.

 

Last night, I reviewed the vehicle specific information (Current Flow diagrams, workshop manuals etc)  that I recently downloaded from VAG's Erwin web site (The Bible ?), and was surprised to learn that the EXPECTED  value for parasitic drain at rest for my 1.4 16v petrol (BBZ engine) 100HP Fab is 25  milliamps.

 

Yes, 25 milliamps. Surprised me too ! Obviously, that includes the on-board immobiliser but excludes the effect of any aftermarket kit fitted - I've got an aftermarket alarm and radio fitted.

 

That would mean that equipped with a 63 amp hour battery, as it is, the vehicle should be capable of being left, unused, 3.5 months before the battery goes totally flatters.

 

From new, my vehicle, has never been able to achieve that, max was 1 month.

 

So, it may well be that its never been right from new.

 

I would imagine, there are few Fabia or Skoda owners in general that could achieve 3.5 months - although Wino reported something near that ?

 

Further reading on t'interweb,  indicated that even the Phaeton, au nateurelle, should only expect a PD at rest  of 40 milliamps !!!!!!

 

Back on, when the temperature improves, I'm outside again to re-install and reconfirm (Or otherwise) the  Fuse voltage drop measurements in the cabin fuse box (This time using proper needle probes !)

 

N

Edited 6 December, 2016 by Clunkclick

[Breezy_Pete]

...I would imagine, there are few Fabia or Skoda owners in general that could achieve 3.5 months - although Wino reported something near that ?...

Did I? Where, when? I don't remember that.  :S

 

Glad you got some useful stuff from erWin anyway. Which document had that 25mA figure in it?  Edit: Don't worry, found it.  "Battery Discharges Itself"? That seems the ideal reference doc in principle. 2nd Edit: Yet it's a misleading title, there's just the one page/flowchart about diagnosing the battery discharge, a few other diagnostic routines for other functions, then it morphs into  current flow diagrams for 2004ish, strange!  Wondered why I found a feral copy of that 04 wiring elsewhere and couldn't see the real thing in erWin.  Just down to a misleading title.

 

Or was it somewhere else you saw the 25mA?

 

I seem to remember my Polo being in that ballpark. Never tried not starting it for more than a week though. 

I do have a permanently on, visible from outside the car, LCD voltmeter which is handy for monitoring purposes. Not backlit though so not easy to see in the dark.  Homebrewed out of odds and sods, the beauty of it is that it, itself, only draws 0.5mA so I'm happy for it to be on 24/7.

Edited 6 December, 2016 by Wino

[rum4mo]

I think that it was Offski that commented on starting a Fabia, though probably a MK2  VRS, after leaving it unused for a long period.

 

I'm guessing now, but as time goes on, car etc manufacturers will be driving down the natural current drain when out of use aided by advances in electronics.

 

I am still keeping my fingers crossed as this latest source of trouble, when given any amount of common sense thinking, should not have been causing that any more than the steering sensor did back in May/June!!

[sepulchrave]

It was me.

 

Three months, no problem. Ex-wife is driving it around now since hers went bang.

[rum4mo]

Sorry, my mistake, initially I thought that it was Offski, but after I wrote about it being a MK2 VRS I thought that something was not completely right there!

[Clunkclick]

Effects of removing Fuse F3 (Diagnostics and Air Conditioning) ?

 

I'm presuming that  the effect of this will be limited to depriving the diagnostics socket of power and therefore make VCDS connections impossible whilst the fuse is out  and that it will not prevent or interfere with the recording of trouble codes in the modules whilst the car is in operation ?

 

Anybody have experience of this ?

 

Similarly would re-inserting the fuse prior to carrying out  a VCDS scan run the risk of deleting or removing trouble codes recorded in modules ?

 

 

N

[Clunkclick]

Finally, have got this nailed !

 

I now think that I have been able to discount the battery as the source of the problem. It took a fortnight to do it:-

 

I left the battery out of the car for a fortnight and, over the course of the first week, fully reconditioned and re-charged it , on a 12 hour rotating cycle (12 hour charge (Until green light shows), followed by 12 hour rest), using the C-Tek MXS-10. At the start of this process the Foxwell battery  analyser showed 13.39 volts, 581 (EN)(Cranking amps), 100% state of charge, 80% state of Health and by the end of the week it was showing 12.98v, 600(EN) (Cranking amps), 100% state of charge, 82% state of Health - yes the state of health improved as the battery "Over-voltage" declined.

 

I then left the battery to stand in-doors, with no loads attached, for a further 6 days to see if it would loose charge. It didn't. The Foxwell battery analyser showed  12.96v, 602EN(Cranking amps), 100% state of charge, 83% State of Health at the end of the week.

 

This convinced me that the battery was OK and that the parasitic drain in the car was the principal cause of the battery loss of charge.

 

I then re-installed the battery in the car and began testing the voltage drop (Again !) across all the fuses in the passenger compartment fuse box and  again I found that the only one showing a sustained value was fuse F3 (Diagnostics and aircon) - 4 Millivolts.

 

So before pulling the fuse I took a further reading of the  overall vehicle parasitic drain at the negative terminal of the battery (All systems off, doors locked, alarm set) - the Fluke gave a reading, as on previous occasions, of 0.40 amps. On removing the fuse I re-measured and the drain went down to 0.13-0.17 amps. I cycled insertion of the fuse a couple of times, just to confirm the before and after values - no change.

 

So, it looks as though at least 50% of the parasitic drain was down to the failed Aircon electronics - either the air recirculation flap motor or the air con control board or both. 

 

With Fuse F3 removed, I started the engine. all seemed fine except the engine management light came on in the instrument binnacle (Always occurs on re-installation of the battery). I also noticed that a light that had previously been showing over the last couple of months, the drivers seat belt light, now went out. As all was Ok, I took it for a 30 mile roundtrip with one stop on route, with F3 removed. No problems, except for one occasion hen the instrument binnacle lights spontaneously dimmed after I went over a bit of a dink in the road - loose earthing point or connector ? Otherwise, all OK.

 

On return, I left the vehicle to stand for two hours and then took further measurements:-

 

the Fluke showed overall vehicle parasitic drain at the battery -ve terminal was 0.14 amps and the Foxwell showed the battery condition as  12,.99 volts, 610 (EN) (Cranking amps), 100% state of charge, 84% state of health - the battery stats weren't as good as this when it was delivered new two months ago.

 

So, I think that's identified the substantial part of the drain.On my calcultions, the battery should now last about 2.5 weeks before the remaining parasitic drain would render it totally discharged. That scale of reduction will do for now and I can seek out and eliminate the remainder i.e. the difference between the figure stated a normal parastic drain on Erwin of 25 milliamps and 140 milliamps in slower time - I suspect that this is the aftermarket alarm (Indicator Light is flashing too fast), possibly in combination with the aftermarket radio.

 

Next job is to remove lower passenger dash and source and replace the flap motor.

 

Aside: There looks like their is plenty of mileage in that rotating battery re-charge technique that I used, sufficient to restore a slightly hammered battery.

 

 

Nick

Edited 16 December, 2016 by Clunkclick

[AndyPandy]

DC Clamp meters have come on a long way since HEME made them. It does not need to be a FLUKE meter either. You can buy a good DC clampmeter which reads 0 to 4A on the lower range,and 0 to 40A on the higher range for about £20..If you put a multirange multimeter in series with the -ve ground lead,on the 10A range,you will not get reading,if you switch to a lower range, say 200mA,it will go overange,until the car alarm,ECU etc settles down.The meter will have a significant in circuit resistance on lower current ranges,and if it is an autoranging meter will give false readings.The solution is to  use a DC clampmeter set to the 4A range.No disconnection is needed which can lead to the radio  losing its code. The correct clampmeter will read about 300mA,and drop to the true quiesent battery load,normally 50mA to 150mA. A 0 to 4A DC clampmeter is quite capable of indicating a lower reading of 50mA.

[Breezy_Pete]

A way to keep your normal multimeter on a low current range while locking up is to fit stackable 4mm plugs on the probes that plug into the meter, then make a shorting link that you can plug into the tops of the stackable ones. Short the leads while locking the car, then unplug the short.

VAG say anything over 40mA quiescent is indicating a fault, I believe?

[rum4mo]

Well I'm back as I expected to be, with another update!  After my previous attempt to find/stop excessive battery draining while the late 2009 Ibiza was not in use, things looked okay but only for a few weeks - then back to "normal"!  As time was running out due to that daughter coming home for 12 days over Christmas, I booked the car into my only local SEAT dealer who is A-C SEAT - while I was in there talking to a service person and letting him look over my document of what happened when etc over the past year or more , he said " don't think that previous work sounds like it was necessary, looks like it needs a software check/update to the BCM - we have just had a 2010 Polo in with a similar problem and VW eventually pointed us in the direction of a software update which, so far seems to have sorted that car" - this was music to my ears as at that point I had not started to make it clear that what I was requesting, was not an initial investigation, but a straight forward "check for BCM software update and apply it".  So I took the car in a week later but requested that I had it back that Friday evening as daughter was landing at around 06:00 on the Monday - went to collect car, "no faults found, battery drain easily within allowed limits, measured/logged drain over a 2 hour period was 25milli amps, tech has lodged a Technical Inquiry with SEAT and we should get a reply in or within 48 hours"! With holiday period in full swing, contacting the dealer was not easy probably made worse by them being open but with reduced staff, so I gave in and visited them to find that SEAT had got back and had directed them to a software fix - which was good news! Booked the car back in and it was worked on last Thursday and "30EB" was applied to J519 - ie BCM. Monitoring the unused car over the past few days has demonstrated that things are looking okay - but I've been there before!!  Using "VAG software update 30EB" as a Google search phrase does yield a couple of hits on a Spanish and maybe French SEAT Ibiza owner's forum, translating these postings does indicate that these software changes were only possibly relevant to a known range of VINs of Ibizas - and that car is in that range. One thing the SEAT dealer did make clear to me was, there would be no record of this change having been made in the past (unless I knew about it) on that car, and when they applied their diagnostic kit to the car they would not be able to tell if it had been applied already - that does not seem to be very handy if that is how the motor industry in general views software configuration, time for them to wake up? 

 

Anyway, I have finally achieved what I set out to and if that has not fixed that car, I'll live with it and suggest that oldest daughter trades it in when/if she returns to work full time in UK! Cost this time, all Tech labour was £99 for first hour of investigation/check for update/log Technical Inquiry followed by £61 for applying the patch/update! I still think that this was mainly a SEAT Ibiza issue, though after they mentioned having a 2010 Polo with a similar issue, maybe a few early 6R Polo as well as they would have used the same BCM (6R0).

Edited 8 January, 2017 by rum4mo