Flat battery issue XR8 S3

[sednwol]

I've been in hospital and haven"t driven the car for a while and now the battery is flat. The battery is OK it just needs a charge. How do I do this? If I disconnect it, it stuffs things up. Is there a work around? Can I recharge the battery whilst it is still connected? Sounds a bit dangereous. Any ideas guys? I am in the RACV but I don't need a new battery.

[bodes-sh]

as long as the key is off you should be ok, i've done it before to an ea, didn't have any problems....then again it was an ea, that's a problem in itself, lol

[SirHenry]

Hope everything's now all good after the hospital visit, after a flat battery you may need the base idle and ecu reset, (you'll probably notice it running rough). There are some how to manually set these but if your falcons anything like my series 1 classic it needs ford :( .

[sednwol]

No ideas guys?

[The Mighty Red]

I learn't along time ago , A battery charger is worth its weight in gold ! If you can get your hands on one I suggest , disconnect the battery pull it out and leave it on charge for 36 hours then put it back in , If you can;t get hold of one , pull it out and take it to a workshop and get it charged, probably cost $10 ....

Dont worry about resetting the ecu or any of that stuff , get it going and then see how its running , chances are it will run fine...

[sednwol]

I have a charger I just wanted to avoid a potential problem. I got the RACV to put a new battery in our S2 AU Ghia and he used a small battery and looped it through the system to save the radio codes etc. whilst the battery was disconnected.

Ill be pulling my battery out tomorrow. Any extra info on how the guy hooked up the battery to save the codes. It will save me from going down to ford for the codes.

[sednwol]

Sorry, I don't know exactly what he did, it was a hand made type of arrangement by the look of it.

did he use it inside the car or outside the car near the battery?

[Ringo]

Nah we do to do this at the dealership I worked at.

You just have to have power going to the battery cables so that when the battery is disconnected there is still still some current going to the ECU and radio.

We used one of those hand henld jumper cable thingo's but I done see why a battery charge can't do the same thing.

ECU and radio memeries only draw a small current.

Remember to have your parkers or headlight ons on when you connect the battery to save any power spikes from doing damage.

What is a hand held jumper cable? Is that the pack you use to charge your battery? would i be able to have both batteries connected to the cable at once and then remove the old one and leave the new one connected or will this do damage. will a 6V battery be enough to power the ecu and radio memory?

[JC]

Originally Posted by J.O

What is a hand held jumper cable? Is that the pack you use to charge your battery? would i be able to have both batteries connected to the cable at once and then remove the old one and leave the new one connected or will this do damage. will a 6V battery be enough to power the ecu and radio memory?

You can use a memory saver, which is a battery with leads that plugs into the cigarette lighter. I guess 6V might be enough to save the codes, but better if it was 12.

[JC]

You can charge the battery in the car with it still connected - just leave the bonnet up and take the caps off the cells.

Your other option is to just get a jump start, and drive/idle the car for around 1 hour - that should be enough to recharge the battery.

Like i said before, would it do any damage to connect both batteries to the car at once, remove the old battery(still has charge but isn't working correctly) leaving only the new battery and hopefully the radio code intact?

[JC]

Originally Posted by J.O

Like i said before, would it do any damage to connect both batteries to the car at once, remove the old battery(still has charge but isn't working correctly) leaving only the new battery and hopefully the radio code intact?

Probably not.

Not a problem. I'll give it a go in the morning. Hopefully nothing gets fried. I really can't be bothered going down to a ford dealer for the radio code, especially if they wanna charge me for it. Why they have the code on such a crappy cd player is beyond me. :nutsycuck

[JC]

Originally Posted by J.O

Not a problem. I'll give it a go in the morning. Hopefully nothing gets fried. I really can't be bothered going down to a ford dealer for the radio code, especially if they wanna charge me for it. Why they have the code on such a crappy cd player is beyond me. :nutsycuck

Ask the crappy thieves that steal them - there must be a market for them somewhere.

[sednwol]

You can charge the battery in the car with it still connected - just leave the bonnet up and take the caps off the cells.

Sounds dangereous JC, have you done it ?

[JC]

Originally Posted by sednwol

Sounds dangereous JC, have you done it ?

Yes. And what's life without a little danger?

Charging a battery is just increasing the Volts/amps etc in the cell itself. You would only get a power spike through the car's circuits if you had the ignition on (no key = no power), though anything that runs off constant power would also be using the power as you are charging. Most battery chargers charge at around 4Amps per hour, and most systems in the car run at least at 5 amps, so the chances of doing any damage is small.

For reference, I did this on my old EB Fairmont Ghia, with no issues at all.

I actually also did it on the AU XR6 VCT when it wouldn't crank and I didn't have any jump leads - 4 hours on the charger gave it enough to kick it over. And in that case it was using a charger that I use to recharge my remote control car batteries.

[sednwol]

Postscript:The RACV guy who came told me that I'd fry all my instrumentation if I tried to do it! Go figure!