New battery required, compatibility check & replacement tips please

[RJVB]

5 minutes ago, Graham Butcher said:

Generally speaking, if this is done without too much delay, you will find that very little or even no data/settings are lost.

Remember, 1st time I'm doing this, and we just learnt that there may or may not be a fixation bracket which I haven't noticed and is apparently not easy to access.

 

I need to buy a charger anyway (I plan to charge the battery completely before installing it), so I can just as well get one with a support function. The question is just how I'll connect it, via the aux/cig plug in the trunk or via the OBD port.

Edited 6 August, 2023 by RJVB

[Graham Butcher]

I have had to replace the battery in my mk2 Superb twice in its life and I never lost anything apart the steering angle input, and just operating the steering from lock to lock cured that problem. I have also fitted a new battery to my current mk3 Superb and the same thing happened, its not a big deal unless you're going to leave the car without a battery fitted for a while, it will stand a battery not being fitted for a few minutes.

 

[Graham Butcher]

3 minutes ago, RJVB said:

Remember, 1st time I'm doing this, and we just learnt that there may or may not be a fixation bracket which I haven't noticed and is apparently not easy to access.

 

I need to buy a charger anyway (I plan to charge the battery completely before installing it), so I can just as well get one with a support function. The question is just how I'll connect it, via the aux/cig plug in the trunk or via the OBD port.

It is my understanding that the battery support function (usually called a maintaining function) is only required if you intend to mothball the car for long periods, i.e., it is a car that you only want to use say during the height of summer, like a convertible etc. Also when using such a system, or if doing a quick charge with the battery in the car that it is best to connect the positive to the positive battery terminal directly and the negative to the negative ground connection on the chassis, not directly to the battery. This because if your car has a battery monitoring system, this sits in the negative battery lead and the so if you connect directly to the negative battery terminal, the battery monitor will not be aware of this connection, connect to the chassis ground point connection, then it will be able to monitor the battery correctly.

 

Do not ever try to connect a charger to the car while changing the battery as the positive lead is almost guaranteed to touch something the is connected to the ground and then you have a short circuit on your hand and may even destroy the ECU's or cause a fire.

 

If you don't have enough knowledge or are uncertain of what you are doing, let a garage do the job for you. 

[Graham Butcher]

23 minutes ago, RJVB said:

Remember, 1st time I'm doing this, and we just learnt that there may or may not be a fixation bracket which I haven't noticed and is apparently not easy to access.

 

I need to buy a charger anyway (I plan to charge the battery completely before installing it), so I can just as well get one with a support function. The question is just how I'll connect it, via the aux/cig plug in the trunk or via the OBD port.

The fixation bracket is there to secure the battery from falling out in the event of an accident where the car ends up on its roof or rolls over so the battery could then possibly fall out onto the bonnet and short circuit and then will have a mayor fire hazard, not good if you or anyone is trapped inside the car. This bracket needs to be undone before disconnecting the battery and also done up before reconnecting the new one.

Edited 6 August, 2023 by Graham Butcher

[RJVB]

37 minutes ago, Graham Butcher said:

The fixation bracket is there to secure the battery from falling out in the event of an accident

I suppose it's also there to hold the heavy battery in place during a frontal choc or even emergency braking, but from what you describe it sounds like it should go over the battery like in the video shown. I don't see anything in the photo of my battery I posted (and didn't remove it myself).

[RJVB]

51 minutes ago, Graham Butcher said:

It is my understanding that the battery support function (usually called a maintaining function) is only required if you intend to mothball the car for long periods,

 

connect to the chassis ground point connection

 

Yet the interest for/when changing batteries is mentioned explicitly, and also comes up in the comments on a connector lead like this one https://amzn.eu/d/gu6g0zI

 

I know that the negative of jump start cables should be connected to the chassis (on the receiving vehicle but probably on the donor too?). Is there a specific point for that and how is that indicated?

[Graham Butcher]

1 hour ago, RJVB said:

 

Yet the interest for/when changing batteries is mentioned explicitly, and also comes up in the comments on a connector lead like this one https://amzn.eu/d/gu6g0zI

 

I know that the negative of jump start cables should be connected to the chassis (on the receiving vehicle but probably on the donor too?). Is there a specific point for that and how is that indicated?

Do you know the code for your radio at all? AS far as I can see, this is the only thing that will need to be re-entered after disconnecting the battery. If you do, then why are you worrying about maintaining a supply to the car while changing the battery? Newer models of radios no longer need the code as they are all encoded with the rest of the system. I attach a copy of the standard radio for the 2009 Octavia.

 

As I mentioned earlier, the leads on modern cars are just long enough to reach and no longer, this means the positive battery lead is going to be touching grounded metal work during the battery swap over, there is simply not enough slack cable, nor the room to move it out of the way. It is a difficult enough job without having to juggle cables out of the way while trying to put the new battery into place on the battery tray, let alone preventing the positive dead from shorting to the chassis, killing any temporary supply you provide the car with. Plugging that you referred to from Amazon, provides a 12v feed to cars ECU's and the radio, these items are connected to the car battery at all times even when the ignition is off and the car is parked up, so putting a live feed into OBD socket is going to result in a live connection to the cars positive lead and also connect to the chassis (ground).

 

Do it by all means if you really want to risk doing permanent damage to the car.

 

Excuse me for saying this, and I don't mean to offend you in any way, but it would appear that you don't have much knowledge when it comes to cars and how they work, would I be correct in this assumption?  If so, then I really recommend that let the dealer/garage where you are getting your new battery from, fit it for you. I saw some earlier posts where you was not even certain of what type of battery you needed to replace the old with, so you are better off being safe rather than sorry should anything go wrong, leave it to someone who knows what they are doing and what battery is the correct type and amperage for your car. The small cost is worth the peace of mind.

radio_navigation_system_amundsen__for_octavia_052009.pdf

[Graham Butcher]

2 hours ago, RJVB said:

I suppose it's also there to hold the heavy battery in place during a frontal choc or even emergency braking, but from what you describe it sounds like it should go over the battery like in the video shown. I don't see anything in the photo of my battery I posted (and didn't remove it myself).

No No, the battery does not have that type of clamp, look at the battery that you supplied the link to, https://www.oscaro.com/batterie-bosch-0-092-s40-080-1777147-2585-p# it has a lip all the way round the bottom of it, that is where the clamp is fitted. The tray has special a shape holds one side of the lip down and the clamp goes on the opposite side to clamp it at the base. Top mounted clamps have almost disappeared on modern cars as the battery fumes corrode the metal and make them less effective. 

[RJVB]

10 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

I saw some earlier posts where you was not even certain of what type of battery you needed to replace the old with

 

I also said I don't have the code

 

Have you looked at modern car manuals? They're generic to the entire series (at least both our Skoda manuals are). Good luck figuring out e.g. exactly which of the engine oil references listed you should (as opposed to could) be using, for instance. Turns out both Oscaro and Amazon knew exactly which size to suggest while even the experts who answered here didn't know which of 2 possible sizes would be appropriate (no offense meant of course).

 

I don't do much work on my car, partly because I don't have a proper place to do so, and partly because the things that do break down (rather reliably I should add) require tools & experience to fix (I'm driving around since '16 with an injector "reconditioned" on the fly by an Italian garage because they received a new one with the wrong mechanical part, and fortunately they figured out that was not the bit that had blown in my car so they mated the 2 working halves so I could continue my journey home).

I do have experience working on my own MC and the instrumented ones in a lab I worked at, plus in working with 220V electrics so changing a car battery is something I should be able to learn how to do, even with keeping a backup tension. On the instrumented bikes we usually slipped a rubber glove over the positive terminal to avoid sparks, so I'll be doing the same here.

[J.R.]

10 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

Do you know the code for your radio at all? AS far as I can see, this is the only thing that will need to be re-entered after disconnecting the battery.

Not required, only a little patience, if you try putting one in when prompted it may give you no end of grief. Editted I see you mentioned this for later cars, AFAIK all the MK2 Octavias have the radios paired to the vehicle system but they can still ask for a PIN, it should be ignored!

 

13 hours ago, Graham Butcher said:

I'd be inclined to jump start the engine and then run the engine for a few minutes to allow the suppression capacitors etc within the various ECU's fitted to the car to store some power, and then switch off and replace the battery with your new one. Generally speaking, if this is done without too much delay, you will find that very little or even no data/settings are lost.

 

Suppression capacitors are not for storage of power, I think you may have meant electrolytic capacitors and even then their function is not to provide current to the modules during a battery change, they would only supply enough power to VM (volatile memory) for less than a second in any case, quite simply other than the electric windows and possibly radio presets there are no VM settings to lose.

 

When you get a instrument display full of warning lights they are all secondary system warnings caused by the steering angle sensor needing to recalibrate itself, they all go within 50m of driving.

 

[Breezy_Pete]

The OP is determined he's going to do it with back-up power on, so no point in trying to persuade him otherwise, I feel.  No need to worry about sparks, they won't do any harm, if they occur. Attaching jump leads or charger leads to the battery clamps will be fine.

 

But he should make a better job of attaching the terminal clamps than the last person to do them.

 

[RJVB]

Determined or maybe rather strongly inclined, but not to the point that I'll discard all warnings

 

Of course the sparks themselves won't do any harm to the car, the potential cause of sparks is a different story. (That said, I've always been warned that sparks caused by a screwdriver or wrench causing the short could supposedly weld the tool in place, preventing you from disrupting the short ASAP.)

[Breezy_Pete]

Sparks themselves could indeed cause a big problem if the old battery has leaked enough hydrogen, but that's fortunately rare.

 

What many people worry unnecessarily about is the spark that can and will occur when reconnecting the last lead to a new battery, after the car has been without a battery for a little while, such as during a change.

In 'times gone by' this barely happened at all, because cars didn't used to have much electronics at all in them, so few or none of the reservoir capacitors mentioned above.

 

Modern cars have dozens of electronic modules, all with such reservoir caps, which will all empty when power is removed for a while.  This means that a significant current flows briefly upon reconnection, recharging all of these capacitors. This means a much bigger spark than many 'old-timers' might be expecting.  It doesn't cause any problem though.

 

As you are going to keep all these modules charged, you should have little if any sparking anyway.

[Graham Butcher]

1 hour ago, RJVB said:

I also said I don't have the code

 

Have you looked at modern car manuals? They're generic to the entire series (at least both our Skoda manuals are). Good luck figuring out e.g. exactly which of the engine oil references listed you should (as opposed to could) be using, for instance. Turns out both Oscaro and Amazon knew exactly which size to suggest while even the experts who answered here didn't know which of 2 possible sizes would be appropriate (no offense meant of course).

 

I don't do much work on my car, partly because I don't have a proper place to do so, and partly because the things that do break down (rather reliably I should add) require tools & experience to fix (I'm driving around since '16 with an injector "reconditioned" on the fly by an Italian garage because they received a new one with the wrong mechanical part, and fortunately they figured out that was not the bit that had blown in my car so they mated the 2 working halves so I could continue my journey home).

I do have experience working on my own MC and the instrumented ones in a lab I worked at, plus in working with 220V electrics so changing a car battery is something I should be able to learn how to do, even with keeping a backup tension. On the instrumented bikes we usually slipped a rubber glove over the positive terminal to avoid sparks, so I'll be doing the same here.

Sorry, my bad, I thought that you meant about losing the presets for the radio stations as you never actually mentioned that you never had the radio code, so you would not be able to input it when and if it asked for it. I agree that there are ways of providing a 12v supply while you are swapping the battery, but it is something that I would personally only attempt as a very last resort as the space in modern cars under the bonnet is very tight, and the cables will get in your way when extracting the old battery and again when fitting the new one. I'm speaking now as a fully qualified Auto Electrical Engineer (retired) and there remains plenty of risks that could cause damage to both your car and also the donor car supplying the power should anything go wrong.

 

 

 

 

[RJVB]

Hydrogen gas should dissipate very quickly when working outside, no?

 

 

Somewhere it's surprising to me that manufacturers haven't thought of providing a proper way to keep the old battery connected to the electrical system until the new one is in place (e.g. with proper connectors on the leads and on the battery to connect a pair of long-enough cables). Then again this probably indicates the reality of how many people change their own batteries (just like how "easy" it is to change a light bulb in most cars of the past decade or two).

[Graham Butcher]

30 minutes ago, Breezy_Pete said:

Sparks themselves could indeed cause a big problem if the old battery has leaked enough hydrogen, but that's fortunately rare.

 

What many people worry unnecessarily about is the spark that can and will occur when reconnecting the last lead to a new battery, after the car has been without a battery for a little while, such as during a change.

In 'times gone by' this barely happened at all, because cars didn't used to have much electronics at all in them, so few or none of the reservoir capacitors mentioned above.

 

Modern cars have dozens of electronic modules, all with such reservoir caps, which will all empty when power is removed for a while.  This means that a significant current flows briefly upon reconnection, recharging all of these capacitors. This means a much bigger spark than many 'old-timers' might be expecting.  It doesn't cause any problem though.

 

As you are going to keep all these modules charged, you should have little if any sparking anyway.

Very true, the spark itself is not normally an issue with modern batteries as they tend to be sealed and maintenance free so the hydrogen gas can't escape like they used with the wet cells that needed top with distilled water from time to time.

[RJVB]

1 minute ago, Graham Butcher said:

 the space in modern cars under the bonnet is very tight,

 

 

I agree, nothing compared to the see of empty space in old American cars but I find the access to the battery pretty spacey on the 1.6TDI Octy. I haven't yet tried to get it out of course.

[Graham Butcher]

1 hour ago, RJVB said:

Determined or maybe rather strongly inclined, but not to the point that I'll discard all warnings

 

Of course the sparks themselves won't do any harm to the car, the potential cause of sparks is a different story. (That said, I've always been warned that sparks caused by a screwdriver or wrench causing the short could supposedly weld the tool in place, preventing you from disrupting the short ASAP.)

Like @Breezy_Pete said if the sparks are only as result of attaching battery charger leads etc, not a mayor problem, but if the sparks occur as a result of a live cable touching ground while taking power from your partner's car via jump leads, there could be some nasty consequences, there is a tremendous amount of power stored in car battery if being jumped from another car, there is no safety fuse to blow.

 

Equally, with the power lead that plugs into the onboard OBD socket, should the life battery lead make accidental contact with ground, then the fuse designed to protect your electrical gear that needs to be permanently connected will blow, which will hopefully return you to the same state that you would be if you just disconnected the battery without have the temp supply connected, but now you have to find the fuse and if needed input the radio code again. 

 

The choice is yours to make at the end of the day, but I think I would be wrong if I did not point out the possible problems to you that you may face. 

Edited 7 August, 2023 by Graham Butcher

[Graham Butcher]

2 hours ago, J.R. said:

Not required, only a little patience, if you try putting one in when prompted it may give you no end of grief. Editted I see you mentioned this for later cars, AFAIK all the MK2 Octavias have the radios paired to the vehicle system but they can still ask for a PIN, it should be ignored!

 

 

Suppression capacitors are not for storage of power, I think you may have meant electrolytic capacitors and even then their function is not to provide current to the modules during a battery change, they would only supply enough power to VM (volatile memory) for less than a second in any case, quite simply other than the electric windows and possibly radio presets there are no VM settings to lose.

 

When you get a instrument display full of warning lights they are all secondary system warnings caused by the steering angle sensor needing to recalibrate itself, they all go within 50m of driving.

 

Yes, I did mean the electrolytic capacitors, or sometimes they use small super capacitors to hold the settings in the NVM ram chips that typically store the user data, hence the mention not of leaving the battery disconnected too long as these would drain away and data once again lost. In my defence, it was late last night, and I was tired 😉

[RJVB]

So... piece of cake or almost, with a little help from a YT'er to see where the safety latch is. Stupid they didn't think of a version you don't have to fish out! On those videos the cars all have a heat-protective sleeve around them; mine didn't. Should it have, or is that only for more high-performance cars?

 

Apart from that, I almost blew my careful preparation on the electrics side of things with a brain fart; put the battery in the wrong way 🙄 . I'd say who does that but I should have realised that I'm capable of such momentary bouts of dementia. Good thing the terminals aren't the same size (which I didn't know)!

 

I used a Bosch C7 charger for the backup ("support") power, and the OBD power cable from Amazon linked above. Good quality that one. A sealed connector but I checked all pins and mine had no shorts between any pins, just earth on pins 4,5 and 12V on the last pin (16). 10A fuses in the aux. plug connector and in the lead coming from the charger (so good thing I didn't turn on the ignition; I measured almost 13A draw with just the rear lights on).

 

I also discovered a designer brain fart: the central computer sits on the same fuses as the main lighting. I don't know if that computer actually has 2 parallel fuses to protect it, but it seems to me you could rather easily get a short in the light bulbs or their connectors ... Not reassuring if that happens while driving and it disconnects the main computer!

Needless to say, I didn't disconnect my front lights by pulling the fuses after all. No need; I wasn't planning to turn on the car while under backup power anyway - no need. I did pull the connectors off the front optic blocks just to be certain.

 

One last question: In one of the tutorial vids the new battery is coded via VCSD. What's the point of that? I suppose the one I put in is close enough to the battery it replaces that there shouldn't be any need for me to have this done?

 

 

(couldn't get the earth connector any lower on the terminal, sorry )

 

[Breezy_Pete]

Good effort on the terminals, much improved. 👍

Don't worry about the heat jacket or coding. The latter isn't possible on non-start/stop battery vehicles, the former not really necessary on standard batteries either.

[sandspider]

On 09/08/2023 at 16:44, RJVB said:

So... piece of cake or almost, with a little help from a YT'er to see where the safety latch is. Stupid they didn't think of a version you don't have to fish out! On those videos the cars all have a heat-protective sleeve around them; mine didn't. Should it have, or is that only for more high-performance cars?

 

Apart from that, I almost blew my careful preparation on the electrics side of things with a brain fart; put the battery in the wrong way 🙄 . I'd say who does that but I should have realised that I'm capable of such momentary bouts of dementia. Good thing the terminals aren't the same size (which I didn't know)!

 

I used a Bosch C7 charger for the backup ("support") power, and the OBD power cable from Amazon linked above. Good quality that one. A sealed connector but I checked all pins and mine had no shorts between any pins, just earth on pins 4,5 and 12V on the last pin (16). 10A fuses in the aux. plug connector and in the lead coming from the charger (so good thing I didn't turn on the ignition; I measured almost 13A draw with just the rear lights on).

 

I also discovered a designer brain fart: the central computer sits on the same fuses as the main lighting. I don't know if that computer actually has 2 parallel fuses to protect it, but it seems to me you could rather easily get a short in the light bulbs or their connectors ... Not reassuring if that happens while driving and it disconnects the main computer!

Needless to say, I didn't disconnect my front lights by pulling the fuses after all. No need; I wasn't planning to turn on the car while under backup power anyway - no need. I did pull the connectors off the front optic blocks just to be certain.

 

One last question: In one of the tutorial vids the new battery is coded via VCSD. What's the point of that? I suppose the one I put in is close enough to the battery it replaces that there shouldn't be any need for me to have this done?

 

 

(couldn't get the earth connector any lower on the terminal, sorry )

 

Where is the safety latch -at the bottom of the battery? I assume this holds the battery into the car?

Thanks.

[Breezy_Pete]

Items 20/21 here, I think: LLLParts

They tend to need a socket extension to reach easily from the top, and try not to drop screw or bracket once loose.

[RJVB]

16 minutes ago, Breezy_Pete said:

Items 20/21 here, I think: LLLParts

They tend to need a socket extension to reach easily from the top, and try not to drop screw or bracket once loose.

 

Yes, that's the one; it's on the engine side of the battery.  Not to difficult to undo, trickier to get back into place if your arms and/or hands  are a bit "too masculine" to fit...

[J.R.]

Battery retaining clamp, not a safety latch, not a latch at all.