Anyone available to code a new (AGM) battery in Northampton please?

[rum4mo]

20 minutes ago, TerFar said:

 

My Skoda dealer describes the BCM is the battery control module. It's not a physical module but part of the msnsgement is software. 

There is no downside to disconnecting it: no errors or such like, just all upsides (no start/stop and a fully charged battery). 

 

Bad wording by your Skoda dealership or at least maybe the service reception person, in these cars the BMS is a sub unit of the CAN-Gateway controller, in some early cars it existed by itself.

 

BCM does all the important controlling of power to areas and users and it also therefore forces certain areas or user to sleep to avoid unnecessary draining of the battery when the car ignition is off car locked or unlocked.

[Warrior193]

19 hours ago, nta16 said:

I see your, er, wotsit, is of a Mini so another long term supporter of the motor parts business and contributor to the country's economy. 

 

 That was a very long time ago - 73 Heatway, followed by Caledonian Safari Rally. 

[FabiaGonzales]

In mine, i used the following;

 

Type: Fleece

Manufacturer: YBX

Serial: YG12345678

 

The battery is a YUASA YBX9027, on the side of the battery is a serial, it's a large YG followed by 8 unique numbers, i used that as the serial to put in the coding.

 

I used YBX as the manufacter so it'd be obvious to anyone that looked at it that'd see YBX9027 on the battery and YBX so theyd know if it was the one i'd put in.

 

On the app i used, it offered a few different battery types that i could select, efb, fleece, agm binary, plus others, fleece is what germans call agm batteries aparently and is what we should select for AGM drop ins, so i used that.

 

For approx a week after installing and coding the new battery stop-start didn't function, my dealership said that it does this so it can first learn if the new battery is actually healthy or not and get itself an idea of a state of charge etc.

 

My old factory efb battery got to the point where stop-start stopped working one day and never came back, i fully charged it with a CTEK and changed the serial number to force a battery relearn and start stop came back but only for a couple days till it stopped again and never came back after that 😂 the new agm one has been rock solid ever since.

[rum4mo]

@FabiaGonzales, just to keep this topic complete and up to date, could you please tell us - or remind us, which scan tool app you used to recode that battery, thanks.

[FabiaGonzales]

8 minutes ago, rum4mo said:

@FabiaGonzales, just to keep this topic complete and up to date, could you please tell us - or remind us, which scan tool app you used to recode that battery, thanks.

I used a bluetooth obd dongle called "VeePeak OBDCheck BLE+" it's available on amazon for around the £40 mark.

 

As for the app, i used the following one (im on iOS i dont know if it's the same on Android);

[rum4mo]

Thanks for that, I've added that one to my iPhone,  and will check if it works with the Carista dongle - I'd think it will, the more the better, maybe not!

[nta16]

Update: Sod's Law, shortly after I removed the existing car battery (I didn't use a plug-in battery back-up) to charge it up out of the car the new battery arrived.  As the new battery didn't show as fully charged up to the eyeballs on my normally over optimistic modern digital multi-meter I put it on the battery maintainer (conditioner?).

 

After about 18 hours with the existing battery fully charged (perhaps I'd done what I normally warn others not to do and bought a replacement too soon) and new battery at green LED it was decided that I should fit the new battery, which I did.

 

Only the time of day needed resetting on the car as everything else had held.  Two test drives and all was fine except I was a minute fast on the clock, but it never did tie in with the radio time pips on DAB stations at least.

 

Oh, joy, it seems I've bought an aftermarket battery without BEM code and possibly not(?) on the vendor code list so a bit of economy of truth might be required with the data input entries.  You'd have thought a VAG vehicle would have been happy with a Bosch product but computers and their programming and extremely difficult to please.

 

If there have been any problems today I will find out in an hour or so for sure. 

 

Edited 21 June, 2021 by nta16
forgot the 'not' as in didn't and better wording, I hope

[FabiaGonzales]

1 hour ago, nta16 said:

Update: Sod's Law, shortly after I removed the existing car battery (I didn't use a plug-in battery back-up) to charge it up out of the car the new battery arrived.  As the new battery didn't show as fully charged up to the eyeballs on my normally over optimistic modern digital multi-meter I put it on the battery maintainer (conditioner?).

 

After about 18 hours with the existing battery fully charged (perhaps I'd done what I normally warn others not to do and bought a replacement too soon) and new battery at green LED it was decided that I should fit the new battery, which I did.

 

Only the time of day needed resetting on the car as everything else had held.  Two test drives and all was fine except I was a minute fast on the clock, but it never did tie in with the radio time pips on DAB stations at least.

 

Oh, joy, it seems I've bought an aftermarket battery without BEM code and possibly not(?) on the vendor code list so a bit of economy of truth might be required with the data input entries.  You'd have thought a VAG vehicle would have been happy with a Bosch product but computers and their programming and extremely difficult to please.

 

If there have been any problems today I will find out in an hour or so for sure. 

 

Batteries don't really come with the BEM code anymore

 

I your battery manufacturer doesn't show up on the list just enter any old 3 letter code (i used part of the batterys model name YBX9027 so i put YBX as the manufacturer id), it's primarily to make it more clear that the battery has been coded in to anybody else looking at it

 

The serial just enter whatever the serial number of the battery is, if it's too short, add extra zeroes at the start or something, again it's not important exactly what it is, as longas it's different as when the BMS sees the new serial number it treats it as a new battery to relearn.

[nta16]

Hi FabiaGonzales and thanks for info.

 

I'm beginning to see much of this is like much other data in its need and absolute accuracy.  I've no idea what system will be used but with help of inputting I hope to get at least what is really required..

 

Just out of interest - what do you and others think the Part number and Serial number are on the Bosch battery I bought, Bosch don't give much away and from my past experience don't reply to emails.

 

Edited 21 June, 2021 by nta16
turned photo other way

[Breezy_Pete]

Bit odd that there's no Bosch logo anywhere on that label?

Almost looks a tad 'homemade'?

[nta16]

German quality has dropped a bit since the 1960s, 70s and 80s.  I expect Bosch would blame it on the battery being made outside of Germany, if it was.  I couldn't be bothered looking up the code for the battery as well as sorting this coding the car's computers want, I'm already a slave to the machines. 

 

 

 

[nta16]

I forgot to put the battery is a Bosch S5 A05 (AGM) -  https://www.tayna.co.uk/car-batteries/bosch/s5a05/

 

[rum4mo]

That label looks as good as it gets nowadays.

 

I plan to use Varta in the vendor field when reg'ng my new Bosch AGM, Varta produce these batteries, Bosch don't, just a branding on a Varta product for a third party.

 

Edit:- you would be very disappointed if you checked that QR code as it does not offer anything other than what is already on that battery.

 

Another Edit:- as far as serial number is concerned, I'd just change the last number, for be creative and change the last 6 numbers for today's date.

Edited 21 June, 2021 by rum4mo

[nta16]

Thanks, you reminded me that I had read somewhere that they're Varta, that's good enough and more honest, don't want to be cheating the machine.

 

We did try checking that QR code (another bl**dy code) but Safari was unavailable (reminds me of SatNav and mobile signals).

 

I'm actually more curious about what entries the factory put in and how much they actually match the battery that was in the car. 

[rum4mo]

I think that you will either find that Skoda filled in everything okay, or it will be as VW have done over a period in time, and that means the capacity and technology are correct, but the vendor is that good old VW Group default JCB - ie Johnson Controls and the serial number is 111111111111 - which is a bit silly as the BEM label carries all the info including the serial number, regardless if the full BEM codes are not needed on these cars.

[nta16]

So that's what JCB stands for.

 

We'll have to takes bets on both and hopefully find out which it is. 

 

[johnh510]

I put a Bosch EFB battery on our 2015 Fabia this April (to avoid changing the type from the Moll 59Ah) and during a chat with The Batteryshop I was told that Varta and Bosch batteries are made in the same factory in Spain.

 

(It seems Moll went bust about a year ago, so exact replacement was not possible)

 

Out of interest I put the old Moll battery on a CTek CT5 a few times and tried various test on it: charged up voltage was initially 13 volts, but was down to 12.5 volts in a couple of days, then It seemed to self discharge much more slowly after that - in 15 days it was down to 12.25 volts.

 

The next discharge was into a 21Watt lamp - 1.71 Amps to start with - to get some idea of what the battery capacity was at "end of life".

According to the internet the nominal Ah figure for a battery is a 20 hour discharge down to 10.5 volts, and the 21Watt lamp got it down to 10.5 volts in 23 hours.

The current had reduced to 1.45 Amps by the time I stopped the discharge at a voltage a bit below 10.

So maybe 1.5 or 1.6 x 23 about 33 to 37 Ah remaining, give or take, from an original 59 Ah

 

After a very long charge - 48 hours - the battery voltage stayed up at 13 volts on a self discharge test and 23 days in the voltage is still up at 12.44

 

The voltage measurement charts were from a "BM2" battery monitor, and the current figures are timestamped snapshots of a digital meter.

Battery voltage is affected by temperature, but it hasn't been very hot or cold lately - you can see it on the charts in the afternoon sometimes after a cold night.

 

Draw your own conclusions - I don't know if the really big discharge helped it, or the longer than usual charge, but it does seem to hold voltage better now.

 

When I was charging the car during "lockdown" it was never left on "care" for long, so maybe the battery would still be happy in the car if it had been given longer in "care".

(comments from the Skoda garage on the last two services were "battery OK but needs a good charge", or words to that effect.)

 

 

Regards,

 

 

John H

 

 

[nta16]

Thanks.  It all suggests I panicked and done what I suggest to others not to do and changed the battery too quick.

 

But I console myself with the fact we don't know about the car's first 18 months of use and the car is too much in use to be unreliable plus I don't want to be farting about with any car in winter especially as both our cars sit outside 365/6 as we only have hardstanding and no garage.  I literally hurt myself last week undoing a nut on my old banger and bruised my back on the concrete and that was on the hottest day of the year.

 

I've got an old 4-amp analogue charger that I use to revive my neighbours' batteries or an old  Accumate 4 stage charger/maintainer which is perfect if there's the time for 36-60 hours of charging, rescued two of my neighbours batteries for his diesel van, one had sat discharged and unused for two years, but I've no idea how good they are for EFB or AGM.  The 4-Amp got the Moll battery back up once given enough time and out of the car.

 

I've always thought a long, slow and low discharge should be matched with a long, slow and low recharge and many of the modern battery chargers are for higher and quicker, suggesting more than a few hours or over night recharge to some now doesn't get a good response, until the car won't start then they're happier to give much longer to fully recharge the battery.  But with my neighbours, standard, car batteries I find now that they give less warning and die quicker than I remember the batteries did in the past even on old (1990s) cars.

[johnh510]

I think you were probably right to have changed the battery - I did ours because of being tired of faffing about... there is no knowing how long the apparent improvement will last on the old battery. 6 years seems to be fair going for a stop-start battery.

 

Your comment about getting a conventional battery going again is interesting to me - my son in law sorned his Mk1 Fabia last year at the start of WFH. The battery is now flatter than a flat thing, I told him it had been left too long, what with the freezing conditions for a month earlier this year.

Perhaps I should see what I can do the next time I am "up there"...

 

Regards,

 

John H

 

P.S.  

The CT5 is 3.8 amps maximum.

[rum4mo]

I am not judging your early intervention as a "cash scattering" event, I think that you have just done what was needed for this car when considering it is used as an essential household tool time was always going to run out for that EFB while you owned that car.

 

I also kind of jumped the gun with my 2011 Audi S4, I've got a new Bosch 019 AGM S5  A13 (95Ah 850A) bought in mid December ready to fit in place of the original VW Group Varta battery - three reasons for buying that, firstly that car is now 10 years and I don't fancy being caught away from and needing to buy a battery of any brand at a distress purchase price to get me going again, and second we have a Costco card and they were running a 15% off (I think) promotion which brought the price down to or below the Tayna price, and thirdly, I had a bad feeling concerning short time what the effect of Brexit would have on the price of Varta/Bosch batteries - so all in all I considered it was buying time despite what annual testing of that battery tells me about its health.

[rum4mo]

14 minutes ago, johnh510 said:

I think you were probably right to have changed the battery - I did ours because of being tired of faffing about... there is no knowing how long the apparent improvement will last on the old battery. 6 years seems to be fair going for a stop-start battery.

 

Your comment about getting a conventional battery going again is interesting to me - my son in law sorned his Mk1 Fabia last year at the start of WFH. The battery is now flatter than a flat thing, I told him it had been left too long, what with the freezing conditions for a month earlier this year.

Perhaps I should see what I can do the next time I am "up there"...

 

Regards,

 

John H

 

P.S.  

The CT5 is 3.8 amps maximum.

 

I keep both our cars in the garage, and I have been "pampering" them both with a couple of CTEK 5Amp chargers, first charger started to default to a safe low setting of maybe 12.7V when it as well out of warranty, so after messing about with it for a while I gave up and grabbed another new CTEK 5Amp being sold online.

 

From that experience of CTEK chargers, I've come to the conclusion that you should ignore the "you don't need to reselect the same program when next using it" - now I always cycle the program selector through all the options back to the one I want to use as I've had the second CTEK also ending up on a safe but constant output after being on for a while, switched off, then reconnected a day later, I eventually reverted the older CTEK to behave as it should by cycling through the program options.  Nowadays, as my own car tends to snooze in the garage, I make a point of checking its "current" voltage and take corrective action is it is lower than it should be when in the final "pulsed top-up stage".

 

I have performed a "recon" charge on my wife's 2015 Polo EFB and that improved it over a long period, possible I'll repeat that once a year and I tend to test my batteries at service time using a CTEK charger to try to avoid getting let down.

 

I've only been let down, or allowed us to be let down once with a car battery, and that maybe 20 years ago with a Ford Fiesta, I started it up on a Saturday morning in winter (wife used it 5 days a week), and thought "that did not sound too good" but conveniently ignored it - she got to and from work on the Monday but the battery was dead after she stopped to shop locally, the AA jumped it and she got home - but that battery was completely dead again, well in terms of being fit enough to turn the engine over - so I learned a lesson that day and wife used my Passat V6 for the rest of that week, which suited her okay!

[nta16]

1 hour ago, johnh510 said:

I think you were probably right to have changed the battery - I did ours because of being tired of faffing about... there is no knowing how long the apparent improvement will last on the old battery. 6 years seems to be fair going for a stop-start battery.

 

Your comment about getting a conventional battery going again is interesting to me - my son in law sorned his Mk1 Fabia last year at the start of WFH. The battery is now flatter than a flat thing, I told him it had been left too long, what with the freezing conditions for a month earlier this year.

Perhaps I should see what I can do the next time I am "up there"...

 

Regards,

 

John H

 

P.S.  

The CT5 is 3.8 amps maximum.

John,

we push the button to cancel the stop/start, or certainly after the first time it stops the car.   So I think I could have got more out of the battery even allowing for all this computer intervention I didn't know about but my wife is almost as cheesed-off with unreliability and cars not going as I am (well passed ethaniums like cheesed-off) having suffered from having over-priced old bangers called "classics" for 30 years so possibly a bullet best dodged regardless of the cost.

 

Do try you s-i-l's battery as I got my neighbour's battery back that had been sitting for two years after being drained from use/misuse. IIRC it took near enough the full 60 hours, at least more than 48 hours.  I started with my old 4-Amp charger as I can tell by where the needle sits at the start and how far it moves usually within either 5 or 10 how low the battery is.  Depending on that I might leave it on the 4-Amp until finish or in the case of that battery swap to the old 4-stage Accumate and perhaps once a day or so swap to using the 4-Amp as a needle guide and to mix things up a bit in the battery charge.

 

My Accumate is only red or green LEDs so it could be red when you check it and turn green as you turn away and leave it for the day.

 

I always use the Accumate after the 4-amp as the needle on the 4-amp never seems to get to '0' so a green light on the Accumate is a double check and it'll stop and maintain the level so no need for more frequent checks.

 

Also bear in mind in that cold month earlier the disconnected battery will self-discharge less so less loss rather than more.

 

With CTek CT5 at most you'd be using 120 watts of mains per hour (0.5 amp), so even if it went mad and ran on full for a full 60 hours that'd be 7.2 kWh on your s-i-l's leccy bill and even if you can't give 60 hours anything reasonable length should be enough for to persuade these modern fussy LED chargers to take over the work and fill the battery. If possible do check and top up appropriate before and if required after the battery has fully settled from coming back from the other side (did it se a light).  Try it and let us know how you get on.

 

Cheers, Nigel

 

[nta16]

2 hours ago, rum4mo said:

I am not judging your early intervention as a "cash scattering" event, I think that you have just done what was needed for this car when considering it is used as an essential household tool time was always going to run out for that EFB while you owned that car.

 

I also kind of jumped the gun with my 2011 Audi S4, I've got a new Bosch 019 AGM S5  A13 (95Ah 850A) bought in mid December ready to fit in place of the original VW Group Varta battery - three reasons for buying that, firstly that car is now 10 years and I don't fancy being caught away from and needing to buy a battery of any brand at a distress purchase price to get me going again, and second we have a Costco card and they were running a 15% off (I think) promotion which brought the price down to or below the Tayna price, and thirdly, I had a bad feeling concerning short time what the effect of Brexit would have on the price of Varta/Bosch batteries - so all in all I considered it was buying time despite what annual testing of that battery tells me about its health.

Oh, no, 10 years and I've crumbled at six and a half, salt into wounds there.  

 

Just joking

 

It was more panic than thought.  I supposed what I should do is keep both batteries and swap them over for charging, I suggested this to my wife and just got 'the look'.  I'm already in trouble for not being able to charge the battery in the times it was available to me even though they were insufficient.  Actually the new battery cost is getting to be better value the more I think about it.

 

Sod' Law if it had happened this week the car is fully available for a whole two consecutive days, and I could have fully charged and tested the old battery but that's my luck with cars, I must have been very evil in past lives. 

 

[AGFalco]

Batteries are in short supply at the minute, and prices have been rising a little.

One type of AGM has been out of stock for over two months with a supplier we use.

 

Thanks, AG Falco

[nta16]

Perhaps I should sell the old battery.  

 

Or if anyone need one short term to get out of a pickle loan it out (while I recharge theirs  ).

 

 

Edited 22 June, 2021 by nta16