Fabia mk 3 Stop/Start

[fp1975]

A few months after I took delivery of my 2016 Skoda Fabia, the Stop/Start function ceased to work.
I took the car in to my local dealership for the fault to be investigated. When I collected the car I was
told the function was working, after they had placed the battery on charge all day. (This in spite of
the fact that I travelled about 40 miles from home to the dealership - which I would have thought
would have charged up the battery).

In a couple of days the fault returned. I purchased a voltmeter that plugs into the lighter socket.
When the engine is running this shows 14.7-14.8 volts; and after a 20 or 30 mile drive the voltage
with the engine stopped is about 12.6v. This drops after 2 hours to just over 12v; and after a day or
two to 11.8v.

I have, on my workbench, a 6 year old battery that I recently replaced with a new one for my wife’s
small hatchback. I use this for testing various things, and charge it occasionally using a trickle
charger. The battery holds a charge of 12.7v for several weeks.

I have concluded that there are a number of possibilities: a) That the Fabia bettery is defective (a
warranty issue?; that a fault is preventing the battery from being fully charged by the alternator; c)
that despite the fact that I have checked carefully that nothing is left “on”, something is draining the
battery when the vehicle is parked. I intend to raise these issues with the dealership when the
vehicle has its first annual service.

Does any of this sound familiar to anyone out there?

[Auric Goldfinger]

The Wife's Fabia MKIII does exactly the same, If it's not used for a couple of days the Stop/Start dosen't work. You can drive it fior hours and it still dosent work

 

Not really bothered about it to be honest but I don't think the battery is up to it. I've complained to the dealer but hay, there not really bothered either.

 

AG

[davidwhite]

So what you are both trying to say is that to use a feature that is all about the car being cost effective you have to drive the car every day, which if you don't need too isn't in any way cost effective 

 

I'm more inclined to think there is an issue causing battery drain, the load on restarting a warm engine shouldn't need the battery to be requiring a charge after a 40 mile journey ( unless it was stop start every half a mile or so of course, but then wouldn't you turn stop start off )

[Auric Goldfinger]

35 minutes ago, davidwhite said:

So what you are both trying to say is that to use a feature that is all about the car being cost effective you have to drive the car every day, which if you don't need too isn't in any way cost effective 

 

I'm more inclined to think there is an issue causing battery drain, the load on restarting a warm engine shouldn't need the battery to be requiring a charge after a 40 mile journey ( unless it was stop start every half a mile or so of course, but then wouldn't you turn stop start off )

 

I think the problem is the battery isn't up to working the stop/start system. The starter motor dosn't restart the car a battery does. Their must be so many factors the system must take into account for it to work properly. 

[@Lee]

stop-start's *******s, it's a means for manufacturers to lower their carbon emissions and prove they're eco friendly whilst increasing battery usage, wear and tear, cold start ups, oil consumption and also being complete and utter *******s and hypocritical.

[thamestrader]

Our 2015 model is the same, the regular weekly pottering about it does keeps the battery changed sufficiently for ordinary usage, but the electronic monitoring records high power consumption/usage - there's a message displayed on the vehicle status display, so the stop start doesn't kick in. If we do a long journey 50+ miles then the stop start will kick for the next days pottering about and then its back to not working again.

 

I agree with the other posters, either battery or the alternator is not up to the job. Or its possible that the electronic monitoring is erring on the safe side and not stopping the engine in case it can't start it. Three have been other threads about this - I wonder if the sister VAG vehicles have the same issue?

[13TSI]

FWIW, my 2016 SEAT Ibiza does exactly the same. I get the 'high power usage' message on the infotainment even when I have no a/c or blowers on etc, just that the car has been sitting for a day. Driving around for a few miles sorts this out though. 

[Rooted]

Owners / Drivers need to keep reporting issues with the Battery in Mk3 Fabia not being up to the job to have Stop / Start / with these Euro 6 vehicles.

If it is in-operable for many peoples journeys then the systems fitted are not fit for purpose.

Small to medium class petrol City Cars should be able to do City / town driving or Short Commutes & have all functions for driver and passenger comfort and also be economic and causing low pollution with Stop / Start enabled and operating.

http://briskoda.net/forums/topic/418387-12v-battery=problem 

Edited 21 April, 2017 by Awayoffski

[SB123456789]

I also have this problem all too regularly and I use mine every day for my commute, 39miles each way. Often of a morning after 30 miles of motorway driving I get to a set of traffic lights and the stop start doesn't kick in and I get the high power consumption message. What's more frustrating is that if I stop off to get fuel when i restart the engine and resume the journey the stop start works.

[vc-10]

I'm sure that sometimes the car decides on startup that the start/stop is not going to work until it's shut down and re-started. I get the same issue as @SB123456789 all the time. Particularly as I car share on my commute, and generally turn off the ignition when I'm dropping my colleague off. The start/stop then often works for the last 2 miles until I get home!

[unclerichy]

S/S hasn't worked on my wife's Mk III for the best part of a year now. It's been in twice for the same problem and all they do is charge the battery and say everything is ok.  She hardly uses the car and it's often a week or more between usage but that's no excuse for battery problems. KESSY has also packed up now and the doors won't open without blipping the keyfob. To top it all the radio shuts down seconds after stopping the engine with a battery warning message.  Her Mk II Fabia never had any battery problems.

[martinjell]

Add me to the list- Mines never really worked! Also if i dont drive my car for a day, when i go to drive it, it comes up on the screen warning battery low charge (or something along those lines! I will make sure I get it looked at before it goes out of Warranty though !

[rum4mo]

My wife has an August 2015 Polo 1.2TSI with stop/start and ELB as per normal on these cars! I've never noticed the stop/start failing to be operational, unless it is in deep winter!

 

The OP seems to be reporting another issue, which is heavy battery draining during period of being out of use - that is not good!  I've been there done that with a pre stop/start era late 2009 Ibiza - and it very annoying and lead to major disappointment at time when you just thought that it was fixed or had gone away!

 

With that age Ibiza 1.4 16v SC (only), it seemed that SEAT had either coded or taken delivery of wrongly coded BCM, ie Central Electrics modules - or maybe just duff but correct coding in them! Sorting that out took me over a year and two SEAT dealers - and eventually they accepted that there was no other failure in the car, it was just down to a BCM coding issue! When they checked using their link with SEAT there were no outstanding software updates available, but they raised a query with SEAT "worldwide" technical support and that resulted in a reply saying that there was a patch available, that patch was applied in January 5th 2017 and so far, with infrequent use and daily voltage logging, that problem has not returned.

 

Is there a possibility that the OP has a similar software issue, ie most of the car control modules are meant to be put to sleep but might not be staying asleep - very hard to establish, the dealer can not detect this and indeed after they down load a patch they are not given any indication that it has been "taken" by the controller, so not a good situation - I can't see how VW group, and probably others think that they can walk away from "configuration control" with so much software being used in modern cars, ie I as a customer should expect when I pay £100+ for diagnostic work, that the tech has not been equipped with the ability to be able to read the exact software version down to the latest patch/change that is in every module so that issues like this take less than a year and quite a few visits to dealers to sort out. In the case of the very fault that I am talking about in that late 2009 Ibiza 1.4 16v, I'm sure most of these cars were just sold on as being too annoying to live with!

 

One thing for the OP to understand, if they don't already, when you stop a car, lots of its modules stay awake for some time then are sent to sleep or held asleep by the power controller - if you are daily, opening that car up and measuring voltage, you will be wakening up these controllers for a period in time - what I am still doing to monitor for any excessive battery drain is, fitting a long battery monitoring lead that ends up at the front bumper, then after a period of time with the car  locked up, I take an initial battery reading, then daily take readings - so I'm never wakening up any modules that have been put to sleep.

[Rooted]

What battery have VW fitted to your wife's 2015 Polo 1.2TSI?

 Just to see if any difference from what Skoda have fitted.

[nbJubilee]

My Citigo has Stop/Start fitted. I use it all the time without problems. Being an old git who does not travel daily to work the motor may sit for days. It is now three years old so the battery is getting on a bit. Still no problems. We should expect Skoda to ensure components can do the job. Ask the dealer to sort it under warranty.

[rum4mo]

1 hour ago, Awayoffski said:

What battery have VW fitted to your wife's 2015 Polo 1.2TSI?

 Just to see if any difference from what Skoda have fitted.

 

Battery is   320A 59Ah (DIN) 640A EN  EFB    P/N 1S0 915 105A

 

From my notes I've made about that car.

[rum4mo]

On ‎20‎/‎04‎/‎2017 at 19:44, fp1975 said:

A few months after I took delivery of my 2016 Skoda Fabia, the Stop/Start function ceased to work.
I took the car in to my local dealership for the fault to be investigated. When I collected the car I was
told the function was working, after they had placed the battery on charge all day. (This in spite of
the fact that I travelled about 40 miles from home to the dealership - which I would have thought
would have charged up the battery).

In a couple of days the fault returned. I purchased a voltmeter that plugs into the lighter socket.
When the engine is running this shows 14.7-14.8 volts; and after a 20 or 30 mile drive the voltage
with the engine stopped is about 12.6v. This drops after 2 hours to just over 12v; and after a day or
two to 11.8v.

I have, on my workbench, a 6 year old battery that I recently replaced with a new one for my wife’s
small hatchback. I use this for testing various things, and charge it occasionally using a trickle
charger. The battery holds a charge of 12.7v for several weeks.

I have concluded that there are a number of possibilities: a) That the Fabia bettery is defective (a
warranty issue?; that a fault is preventing the battery from being fully charged by the alternator; c)
that despite the fact that I have checked carefully that nothing is left “on”, something is draining the
battery when the vehicle is parked. I intend to raise these issues with the dealership when the
vehicle has its first annual service.

Does any of this sound familiar to anyone out there?

 

 

fp1975, remember, from my last posting, that I am only alerting you to what might be happening, in your case there might be something else faulty - but I've chosen to pass my experiences to you maybe to let you get to the root of this quickly!  I am lucky as I did not need to get the use of this car every time I needed to use a car, if I had, and was not really into trying to sort things out, money aside, I would have binned that car as selling it with that fault would only have brought more trouble to my door - well if I sold privately that is!

[thamestrader]

A bit of an update....

We used the Fabia today for a longish motorway trip, 56 miles each way the majority at 70 of the M1/M25. Info display was displaying 'High Power consumption' message for S/S when we set out. After coming off the motorway the S/S is working fine and the info display message has been replaced by one saying ' Stop Start working correctly' or words to that effect.

 

So I conclude that there is, in principle,  no obvious fault with battery or charging circuit - it does work as designed when all fully charged. I realised that we have the Fabia configured for DRL - I'm wondering if they impose a load that with pottering about mileage is enough to trigger excessive power consumption, which in reality is not excessive its more a case of low or insufficient battery charging. I feel this points to one or both of battery/alternator being under specified......

 

[the_raz]

I have the same issues; start/stop is usually not working, and the explanation is high energy consumption. As I mostly do very short trips (1-7 miles) I have a battery charger connected to the engine preheting cable, so in winter the battery is topped up whenever I preheat the car. In summer, I can also plug in the car for a couple of hours, and then I get s/s working for a couple of days. I have also been thinking that the charging system is underwhelmed, and not able to charge the battery fully - not even during 150 miles of highway driving....

[GeneralPurpose]

On 2017-4-20 at 19:44, fp1975 said:

A few months after I took delivery of my 2016 Skoda Fabia, the Stop/Start function ceased to work.
I took the car in to my local dealership for the fault to be investigated. When I collected the car I was
told the function was working, after they had placed the battery on charge all day. (This in spite of
the fact that I travelled about 40 miles from home to the dealership - which I would have thought
would have charged up the battery).

In a couple of days the fault returned. I purchased a voltmeter that plugs into the lighter socket.
When the engine is running this shows 14.7-14.8 volts; and after a 20 or 30 mile drive the voltage
with the engine stopped is about 12.6v. This drops after 2 hours to just over 12v; and after a day or
two to 11.8v.

I have, on my workbench, a 6 year old battery that I recently replaced with a new one for my wife’s
small hatchback. I use this for testing various things, and charge it occasionally using a trickle
charger. The battery holds a charge of 12.7v for several weeks.

I have concluded that there are a number of possibilities: a) That the Fabia bettery is defective (a
warranty issue?; that a fault is preventing the battery from being fully charged by the alternator; c)
that despite the fact that I have checked carefully that nothing is left “on”, something is draining the
battery when the vehicle is parked. I intend to raise these issues with the dealership when the
vehicle has its first annual service.

Does any of this sound familiar to anyone out there?

 

Our 1.2TSI 110PS DSG does low miles and shorter trips these days. Mostly urban driving too. Stop/start works fine all the time albeit this car is still just 10 weeks old. However, this is my second one of these, the last one near 6 months old, and no issues with SS either. There has been a software update to the ECU on 2016 MY cars with DSG to reduce electricity consumption considerably. I don't know if that applies to manual geared cars. Worth checking. Also I have day light running lights switched off...it makes a difference.

Edited 2 May, 2017 by Estate Man