When we bought Becky, our 2012 Panda Dynamic Eco, back in the spring of this year there was some work to be done before we took possession. I had been watching the advert for her for some time before we went to see her so I know she had been "resting" for a while. Then, immediately after taking possession, she had an enforced period of idleness whilst we, unexpectedly, spent a month down in Devon with Mrs Jock's sister, so the battery was probably quite lowly charged by then. As soon as we got back I got stuck in with a nose to tail check over including plugging in my newly acquired
Multiecuscan. I got a bit of a shock when a number of trouble codes appeared! There was one for the clutch pedal switch 2 P083F (didn't even know it had one, let alone 2!, Thought that nonsense didn't start 'till the Euro 5 engines? - must have a look) another for the power steering (lost the actual P number) Then there was B1033 Daylights? Who knows that one? And U1703 instrument cluster and U1700 body comp control unit. The last two terrified me!
Anyway, after I'd calmed down a bit I had a good search round on the forum and Google and a recurring theme soon emerged. - Battery problems. It seems that poor battery performance and/or connections can throw up a plethora of fault codes (DTCs). So I cleaned up the slightly corroded battery terminals and clamps. Also the earthing points and coated all in a thin layer of "Holts No Crode" (a tube of which has now lasted me about 20 years!). Then I connected up my CTEK XS 7000 smart charger and left it for a couple of days.
Cleared all the codes and drove around for a couple of days. Rechecked with
MES. Brilliant, no codes stored. Rechecked again later summer when I did a "big" service on her, still A-OK, no codes. Just checked again before sitting down to this, still all clear! I suspect Becky's battery had been allowed to get quite flat whilst she was waiting for me to "rescue" her from the garage and then her enforced lay up whilst we were down south won't have helped. The only thing I have subsequently learned is that the earth leads are prone to internal corrosion. Not too sure how you can check for this but if problems develop in future it's going to be something to keep in mind - did a voltage drop test on the earth lead, using the starter motor for load, which gave no indication of problems so probably ok at this time.
Here's a wee, slightly unconnected, snippet I learned recently. Do you have a car with stop/start technology? Is it fairly new (mine's 2 years 7 months old) now have a look at the battery. Does it have the letters EFB on it? If so beware if you need to jump start. A lot of these newer stop/start set ups use Enhanced Flooded Batteries because they can cope much better with frequent heavy loads on a discharge/charge cycle when compared to the conventional wet lead acid battery. Where it gets interesting though is the alternator. Mine (2016 1.0 Ibiza ecomotive) does regenerative recovery! Wow! So what's that? Well, it's quite clever really. When your cruising or on light throttle openings the alternator works pretty much just as you would expect charging if necessary with voltages around the 13.5 to 14 volt level depending on current needed. However if you make high power demands on the engine the clever electronics cut the charge rate to virtually zero so that max engine power is available to propel the vehicle. The really clever bit comes when braking or on a trailing throttle when the, afore mentioned, "clever electronics" push the charge rate to very high limits. I've been told 18volts is seen! Goodness knows what current is flowing at that potential difference! Of course it will be taking a good few extra horse power to rotate the alternator when doing this but it's all for free as you're trying to loose energy when slowing down anyway!
The problem, so I've been told, comes when this "very clever" electronic control unit sees something it's not expecting. For instance when the battery it's monitoring is in a quite discharged condition (the flat battery in your non starting car) and you suddenly whack it with a nice big fully charged battery complete with a few voltage spikes as you get a spark at the clamps! Or, if it's lucky enough to survive that then after you've successfully started your car and then immediately remove the jump leads. The charging system has been "seeing" a virtually fully charged battery during and after starting because you have your nicely charged up slave connected. Now you whip off the jump leads within moments of the start. The control unit now goes instantaneously from "seeing" a fully charged battery to "seeing" a well discharged one and tries to immediately compensate by pushing the charge rate up to max. If your unlucky it can't cope and something, expensive, fries!
My owners manual shows two ways to connect when jump starting car to car. The first, for versions without stop/start is as I would normally do it - that is red lead positive on donor to positive on car then black lead negative on donor to engine block on car - for stop start models though it shows red lead positive to positive as above but black lead goes engine block to engine block! In the first instance the final connection is made to the engine block so that any spark is not near the battery so reducing the chances of igniting battery gasses (this has been the recommended way for years) but I don't understand the logic behind going block to block on the earth (black negative) lead on the stop/start setup? Must be something to do with the battery ECU? Going to ask more questions about this at the local Audi/VAG specialists, but if anyone has knowledge, I'd love to learn! Also need to verify if I can connect my stand alone slave in the normal way. That is positive to positive and negative on slave to engine block on vehicle.
:bang:
