Hi

My 16k miles Panda at just over three years old (out of warranty) has just suffered a flat battery. No warning, no messing about. One day it started fine and the next it didn't. Annoyingly it was a restart at a railway level crossing. So the second start in 800 yards. I have a habit of killing the engine at traffic lights.

The car had been standing for about a week before the day before when it was used for a short trip to the shops.

The last car I changed a battery on was over ten years old.

The original battery was only 40Ah. That sounds tiny. I remember an old car having an 83Ah battery. A 45Ah from Halfords was £109. A 50Ah from the first hit on Google was only £54 plus postage. Arrived next day and was identical in physical size.

J

Hi,
was it still performing "stop/start" automatically.. or were you doing it yourself..??

my experience of the S/S is they sense the drop in stored capacity.. so refuse to shut-off the engine..
but they can maintain this "Normal Car" service for YEARS..

lets hope the new battery cures all ills,

charlie - 2012 TA

Not the quite the same thing, but my (Mk2)2005 MJ now has 112,000 miles on the clock and is on its 4th battery. It doesn't have S-S but obviously the diesel takes more of a kick to get it going than a petrol engine, but then it's a bigger battery.

Although there will always be those with different experiences, most people in the car trade will tell you that, on average, a car battery only lasts for about 3-4 years. As my newest one was only installed earlier this year, that sounds about right.

In each case though it's gone from starting perfectly normally to having not enough to turn the engine over at all.

Eee, not like it was in my day when you had several days warning before it finally gave up the ghost and you had time to give it a good trickle charge.

But then again, the weather was better, a gallon of 4 Star was only 35p and mini-skirts were in.

On the downside, I only earned £20 a week. Eee, them were't days

varesecrazy said:

Powellj3

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It is a Pop and therefore the only start/stop is by turning the key. I've had start/stop on a number of hire cars (work) and never got on with it. But then it's been a different make and model each time and I've not given it time to settle.
This is the wife's car and she generally drives around town/shopping/running the grandkids about. So lots of short journeys which will be harder on the battery.
It has always started first turn of they key. I remember older cars turning more slowly as the battery failed - giving you some sort of notice.
This one just died. One minute everything worked, the next it didn't.

Our 2014 Lounge 1.2 battery died earlier this year.

Short trips just killed it, it never really went more than around 5 miles at a time, I was surprised the battery lasted as long as it did!

Modern cars don't do the slow whir, whir, whir crank when the battery is low, they tend to do nothing at all.
If there's not enough juice in it, they tend not to power the relay for the starter motor at all so they appear completely dead.

There's quite a few differences between cars fitted with stop/start and those that aren't.
First off the battery is different, SS equiped cars tend to use Enhanced Flooded Cell batteries or Absorbed Glass Mat batteries to cope with the demands.
Normal Lead Acid batteries just aren't up to it.

They also have battery sensors that determine if a restart is possible based on charge, if there's not enough in the battery or load on the engine/electrical system is high, it won't allow an engine stop.

Startor motors and their wiring tend to be uprated to take the strain of all those extra starts as well.

Replicating SS on the key of a car without these technologies, that is only doing short trips isn't doing you or your car any favours, it'll leave you stranded due to failed restarts far too often and ruin the normal Lead Acid Battery sooner rather than later.