[rooks335]

Hi peeps,

While replacing the rear door lock actuator (1.5-2hours) with the key fob in my pocket went to start the car the next day and boy was the car not happy.
Wiper came on, airbag light, wheel lock, idrive won't light up. Put the ctek on and waited around 10-12 hours and car started as per normal. Ok must be the battery then losing charge I thought.

The car operated normally since, door lock using fob, car goes to sleep, wakes using fob and starts etc.

Until yesterday.... decided to vacuum the car so i opened all the doors and trunk and had the fob in my pocket and spent almost 2 hours. All this time I did notice that the dome lights were on but thought nothing of it. Radio was not on since I did not turn or push the start button while cleaning the car. So after 2 hours i tried to lock the door and nothing. Inserted the fob key in the slot and there was barely any dash activity safe for the park brake light and airbag light and a weird buzzing sound from behind the dash.
Checked the connectors on the batteries, removed IBS and no luck.

Went home to get the ctek and hooked it up and after 2hours of trickle charging the car came back to life and started per normal.

So I thought, ok my 2yr 10month Century battery is not holding charge and is probably dead.

Full charged the 70ah battery overnight for about 12hours.

This morning took the car to batteryworld where they did a battery test and also a load test on the battery. All checks passed and they could not fault the 660cca battery.
Tech at Batteryworld seems to think that while vacuuming and leaving doors open including boot while having the fob in my pocket this caused a complete drain of the battery.

The car does go to sleep when its locked (no light on the gearshift and start button)
Few hours ago at work the voltage measured around 12.3/12.4v via the ciggie lighter with the ignition in ON (no engine start)

What are your experiences when working on the cars? Do you have the fob key with you?
Does battery drain occur when the car fails to go to sleep due to the fob for a period of 1.5-2 hours?

B+ cable recall has been done on the car and the battery appears not to be the culprit.
Left the IBS plug off too for the meantime.

I'll do more tests on the weekend with my new multimeter to see how much drain the car goes through when it doesn't sleep / doors open etc.
Sure hope its not the B+ cable into the fuse box.

[Ken Oath]

A nearly 3 year old Century battery is typical for life expectancy.

Do you have the load test results from Battery World?

[insanesam]

Originally Posted by rooks335

Hi peeps,

While replacing the rear door lock actuator (1.5-2hours) with the key fob in my pocket went to start the car the next day and boy was the car not happy.
Wiper came on, airbag light, wheel lock, idrive won't light up. Put the ctek on and waited around 10-12 hours and car started as per normal. Ok must be the battery then losing charge I thought.

The car operated normally since, door lock using fob, car goes to sleep, wakes using fob and starts etc.

Until yesterday.... decided to vacuum the car so i opened all the doors and trunk and had the fob in my pocket and spent almost 2 hours. All this time I did notice that the dome lights were on but thought nothing of it. Radio was not on since I did not turn or push the start button while cleaning the car. So after 2 hours i tried to lock the door and nothing. Inserted the fob key in the slot and there was barely any dash activity safe for the park brake light and airbag light and a weird buzzing sound from behind the dash.
Checked the connectors on the batteries, removed IBS and no luck.

Went home to get the ctek and hooked it up and after 2hours of trickle charging the car came back to life and started per normal.

So I thought, ok my 2yr 10month Century battery is not holding charge and is probably dead.

Full charged the 70ah battery overnight for about 12hours.

This morning took the car to batteryworld where they did a battery test and also a load test on the battery. All checks passed and they could not fault the 660cca battery.
Tech at Batteryworld seems to think that while vacuuming and leaving doors open including boot while having the fob in my pocket this caused a complete drain of the battery.

The car does go to sleep when its locked (no light on the gearshift and start button)
Few hours ago at work the voltage measured around 12.3/12.4v via the ciggie lighter with the ignition in ON (no engine start)

What are your experiences when working on the cars? Do you have the fob key with you?
Does battery drain occur when the car fails to go to sleep due to the fob for a period of 1.5-2 hours?

B+ cable recall has been done on the car and the battery appears not to be the culprit.
Left the IBS plug off too for the meantime.

I'll do more tests on the weekend with my new multimeter to see how much drain the car goes through when it doesn't sleep / doors open etc.
Sure hope its not the B+ cable into the fuse box.

Had the exact same experience with a 680CCA Supercharge Gold Battery.
From day 1 when opening doors for an extended period e.g. vacuuming car, the battery warning light would come on. Tried to claim warranty for new one but the battery passed all tests.
I replaced it with a Varta 680CCA and problem solved.

[rooks335]

Originally Posted by Ken Oath

A nearly 3 year old Century battery is typical for life expectancy.

Do you have the load test results from Battery World?

Good point, no print outs were offered. I'll see if i could obtain a printout this weekend.

Initial tester was the supercheap / repco looking tester
2nd tester was on a trolley which would offer load testing.

[rooks335]

Originally Posted by insanesam

Had the exact same experience with a 680CCA Supercharge Gold Battery.
From day 1 when opening doors for an extended period e.g. vacuuming car, the battery warning light would come on. Tried to claim warranty for new one but the battery passed all tests.
I replaced it with a Varta 680CCA and problem solved.

Interesting... Will see if there are some resellers. Century seems to be the mainstay for supercheap/repco and battery world here in Perth.
Paid around 270ish for the din65lh, how much was the varta 680cca?

[rooks335]

Did some tests last night with the new UT105 multimeter.
Put the boot latch on lock mode then locked the doors and waited for the car to sleep.
Tested volts on the batt direct from the + and - terminal in the boot and measured 12.8v.

Tested parasitic draw by putting meter on 10amp setting and bridging meter between the negative posts and locked the car using the fob. Effectively boot, doors, bonnet closed, ibs plugged in.

1:32 start button turns off shift light remains 2.48amp draw
2:00 shift light off 0.70amp
3:00 to 7:00 0.45amp
15:00 0.43amp
16:00 0.35amp
30:00 0.00 to 0.01amp

Doors opened no ibs no fob
5:30 dome light off 5.3amp
8:00 start button off 0.45amp
10:00 0.36amp
10:50 shift light off 0.00amp

Ibs on, fob in car, with boot open
0:00 16.4amp
1:00 9.10amp
2:00 6.00amp
2:30 3.87amp
5.40 3.62amp
8:00 dome light off. Ibs work car up 7.10amp
9:30 3.18amp
10:00 1.40amp
19:00 shift light off car zzz 0.00amp

Batt Volt at end of test 12.19 recovered to 12.4v
Started car, increased batt discharge 1st time.
Then normal 2nd start.


The battery is 660cca with 70ah
How do we work out if the amp draw with duration. Does the following site help?
https://www.batterystuff.com/kb/tool...to-a-load.html

Amp draw + duration equals ah result. If ah exceeds battery capacity then battery has no power up car let alone crank the engine? Hope its the right understanding.

[insanesam]

Originally Posted by rooks335

Interesting... Will see if there are some resellers. Century seems to be the mainstay for supercheap/repco and battery world here in Perth.
Paid around 270ish for the din65lh, how much was the varta 680cca?

$291

https://www.batteriesdirect.com.au/mobile/shop/product/23064/varta-blue-dynamic-(din66-rhp-tall-with-ledges).html

[Ken Oath]

Battery capacity and the rate of discharge is not linear. Determining the dynamic draw in a vehicle application is difficult. Ah is only useful for relative comparisons i.e. between two battery specifications.

SoC via voltage measurement is the least accurate way to determine battery health. A load test will be more accurate.

[juld0zer]

Does your car have comfort access? The car may never go to sleep in the presence of the key.

Was the Century battery registered to your car when it was installed? Like for like replacement (ie. Same Ah and flooded or AGM type).

I normally see this occur on very old batteries and then they also don't take much charge when connected to our workshop chargers. They start off accepting about 10A then quickly taper down to less than 3A. The warning never goes away on its own. Take it as a gentle hint of doom around the corner. My opinion is it has something to do with the calculated startability limit and the measured battery data (temperature, SoC)

Power management is a complicated system on a modern BMW. Things improved a lot with the F cars and you can actually view a lot of data. E cars may as well have the menu disabled in ISTA in comparison.

You've done well by rolling the locks when leaving the doors open for extended periods.
The Battery World guy is a peanut. Only a fubar battery goes flat in two hours from leaving the doors open
Those battery testers are also questionable because you can set the pass/fail parameters and there are various parameters to set before testing that can skew the result. For a borderline battery, this can be frustrating.

[rooks335]

Originally Posted by juld0zer

Does your car have comfort access? The car may never go to sleep in the presence of the key.

Was the Century battery registered to your car when it was installed? Like for like replacement (ie. Same Ah and flooded or AGM type).

I normally see this occur on very old batteries and then they also don't take much charge when connected to our workshop chargers. They start off accepting about 10A then quickly taper down to less than 3A. The warning never goes away on its own. Take it as a gentle hint of doom around the corner. My opinion is it has something to do with the calculated startability limit and the measured battery data (temperature, SoC)

Power management is a complicated system on a modern BMW. Things improved a lot with the F cars and you can actually view a lot of data. E cars may as well have the menu disabled in ISTA in comparison.

You've done well by rolling the locks when leaving the doors open for extended periods.
The Battery World guy is a peanut. Only a fubar battery goes flat in two hours from leaving the doors open
Those battery testers are also questionable because you can set the pass/fail parameters and there are various parameters to set before testing that can skew the result. For a borderline battery, this can be frustrating.

Yes I do have comfort access and did the tests of on the draw above leaving the key fob in the car. Noticed during the tests that the start button would go out first then the gear selector light last. Pressumption is that once start and P gear selector light goes out I would get 0.00/0.01 amp draw so effectively the car goes to zzzzzz. But if you say that if the fob is in the car the car never truly sleeps. Perhaps the IBS would wake it up more often? I did notice that draw went back up to 7.10amp from 3.62amp at the 8:00minute mark and this was with the fob in the car.

Back in June 2016 when the battery was new I used NCSExpert to view the Klasse_batterie and turns out that the old battery was the same ah rating at 70ah, so no coding required.
Registration of the battery was done using MHD.
Next new batt I'll give rhinegold a go since I've manage to get it going via the community's vmware coding virtual machine.

Interesting about the startability limit and measured battery data, will do some reading. State of charge according to that tiny circular window shows green, but starting to doubt the reliability SoC indicator.

F series are nice, no doubt the upcoming G series too but the e90 335i will have to soldier on.

Perhaps its just unlucky that the Century Din65LH lasted 2 months shy of 3 years. In saying that perhaps 10km return daily commute doesn't help either.
Heard good things about the Varta batteries and will try to find a resller here in Perth.

[rooks335]

Battery world WA instead recommended a Delkor calcium battery when I enquired about a Varta battery for the 335i.

https://www.delkor.com.au/en-au/prod...eries/58012-ca

Calcium....sounds special. hopefully not so special i need to buy new chargers.

Can anyone vouch for delkor battery goodness/badness ?

[Ken Oath]

Both Delkor and Varta are part of Johnson Controls which is highly reputable.
I would be interested to know why a salesperson would stipulate one brand over the other, was a reason provided?

It seems opinion advice rather than factual evidence based.

[juld0zer]

Is there any faults logged? Eg. Power management faults for forced shutdown, current draw violations, etc?

Could you induce the problem again and check the battery voltage to see if it is indeed too low?

Am i also right in assuming those time figures are in MM:SS and not HH:MM?
Any problems with your ULF?

[rooks335]

Originally Posted by juld0zer

Is there any faults logged? Eg. Power management faults for forced shutdown, current draw violations, etc?

Could you induce the problem again and check the battery voltage to see if it is indeed too low?

Am i also right in assuming those time figures are in MM:SS and not HH:MM?
Any problems with your ULF?

Replication of issue seems to be when the car does not go to sleep aka doors not locked and or fob left in the car during DIY events.

Looking more likely to be battery, yet baffled why IBS does not put the car to sleep sooner or nag low battery voltage.

Time figures are in MM:SS

Supercharge MF66H with 40 months Warranty at about $200-230 is tempting with about 750cca and 74ah.

[rooks335]

Decided to check the fluid level on each battery cell fill plug. Took apart the battery positive junction box and unclipped it to gain access to the fill plug.
All battery cells were still submerged with acid goodness regardless still topped up each cell to the limit fill level.
measured the batt and showed 12.79v at the terminals with it 'unplugged' from the car.
Set the ctek to recond mode and left it for 12 hours.

After 12 hours of recond the battery shows 13.7v at the terminals (still disconnected from car).

Put everything back together and as soon as the car 'woke up' battery measured 12.5v.

Once car went to sleep showed 12.9v at the terminals connected to the car.

See how the battery performed this week.

ps: upon first start up after recond 'increase batt discharge' appeared. This could be the charger/volt reading thing that plugs into the cigarette plug.

[DR-JEKL]

FWIW I bought a Varta F21 AGM for $450 from my local batteryworld.

they're expensive batteries but they do last ages (one in my VW had 6 years use and the oem BMW batteries were varta and they commonly last 6+ years)

[rooks335]

Originally Posted by DR-JEKL

FWIW I bought a Varta F21 AGM for $450 from my local batteryworld.

they're expensive batteries but they do last ages (one in my VW had 6 years use and the oem BMW batteries were varta and they commonly last 6+ years)

Agree that Varta seems to be the way to go. I was looking at the F18 which is a non AGM, turns out the autobarn is a distributor. $375 but could knock that to down to $300 with 20% off first time members

The battery does seem to drop all the way down to 12.15v if we wake the car up with angel eyes on, interiors and trunk open. The battery would then go back up to 12.5/6v when car is asleep.
I believe this battery is fooling all the testers including load testers simply because the cca is 587cca out of 660cca 11% loss only.

[rooks335]

Update to this thread:
Purchased the Varta F18 battery which is rated at 85ah and comes with 38month Warranty.

Used NCSexpert to change/code the battery to 90ah from 70ah and then registered the battery using Rhinegold. Could have coded to 80ah instead of 90ah but felt it was better to go slightly higher then lower ah.

Let's hope its the last of the battery drain issue.

[Ken Oath]

Originally Posted by rooks335

Update to this thread:
Purchased the Varta F18 battery which is rated at 85ah and comes with 38month Warranty.

..............

Let's hope its the last of the battery drain issue.

Why did you choose a flooded cell battery?

An AGM battery will lose 1-3% per month due to self-discharge compared to 1% a day for flooded cell.

[rooks335]

Originally Posted by Ken Oath

Why did you choose a flooded cell battery?

An AGM battery will lose 1-3% per month due to self-discharge compared to 1% a day for flooded cell.

AGM varta would have set me back another $100 which would tally into the $400ish dollar mark.

Im curious to know from members here when doors open and trunk open, what does the volt read on your healthy batteries.