Mark944na86

I have a problem battery. A few months back, I had a situation where I had parked for a short while in a car park, and when trying to restart, the battery died completely. With the igntion in the "on" position, the LCD clock would display, but turning the key - nada. LCD clock would go out. Even the interior light would draw enough current that everything would appear absolutely dead. Open the door and no light, and no LCD Clock. Close the door and the LCD clock slowly returns to life. This is a 700 CCA Calcium/calcium battery. I'd expect more current out of a somewhat flat AA cell.

Recharging the battery with a trickle charger brought it back to life. Subsequently, I replaced the alternator, and put a slightly up-rated regulator on it (14V -> 14.5V) to get my charging voltage up a bit. And for a few months, it seemed to be OK, until, without warning, it did exactly the same thing a little while ago.

When the battery dies like this, it goes very quickly from being able to crank the engine, to absolutely nothing. Not even enough amps to even operate the hatch release motor (which sucks on a RHD S2, since the battery is in the rear!)

Now, I bought this battery a couple of years ago from the RACQ (like the AAA), and it supposed to be under warranty, but the RACQ service guy says the battery checks out as "OK" on his battery tester (which measures resistance through the cells, I believe). He tells me that because it is a Calcium battery, it will only recharge to 85% on a trickle charger, so I'd need to buy a "smart" Ca battery charger to get it to full charge. Well OK, but since my alternator charging circuit is effectively a trickle charge circuit, what's the point of that?

What I find puzzling is the "all-or-nothing" nature of the discharged state of the battery when it runs down. It's like it just falls off the edge of a cliff. Certainly not like any other battery I owned that will give you some warning when it's running down by turning the engine over more slowly perhaps, or showing dim headlights, but still able to put *some* current (well, at least more than enough to barely run an LCD clock!)

So what's the story? Is this a common type of failure? What causes the "fall off a cliff" type of behaviour when it runs down? Is this the symptom of a particular type of battery damage? If I replace the battery (which I suspect I have to, regardless of what the RACQ guy's battery tester says), what should I be looking for/to avoid? Puzzling.

Eric_Oz_S2

Aren't calcium batteries supposed to be better the LA batteries? My LA battery is 4 years old, still going strong - although I think I will replace it before going to Bathurst. I was thinking about getting a Delkor Ca battery - maybe best to stick to LA?

I suppose you have checked the standby current drain of your car electrics?

I have had the same all or nothing with 2 batteries (LA) before. Car starts fine, then 1 day nothing - no warning, no slow cranking. I presume that at some point the plates fail and the batteries won't hold charge.

Mark944na86

I don't know much about batteries (clearly!) But Ca batteries *are* LA batteries, but the lead plates have a small amount of Ca added to the alloy, giving them their supposedly improved properties. (Those improved properties are supposed to be lower self-discharge rate, and low off-gassing (hydrogen), from what I've read.)

But don't know if my problem relates to battery chemistry or not... I was wondering if someone here might know.

The standby drain is normal, but checking things after the problem first occurred suggested my charging voltage from the alternator was a bit on the low side. If I was driving with lights on, wipers on, a/c on -- I wasn't charging the battery, I was actually draining (which is what I believe led to my first failure -- rainy day driving.) That's why I replaced the alternator and up-rated the regulator.

However, the sudden nature of the failure(s) I thought was puzzling, particularly since a simple trickle charge seemed to get the battery on-line again (and indeed, reading "OK" according to the RACQ guy's battery analyser -- both times.)

Well, that's interesting you've seen the same "all-or-nothing" effect -- I've never experienced that before.

But did either of your batteries respond to a simple trickle recharge? The fact that the battery seems to happily charge up again from that state I find surprising.

Eric_Oz_S2

I had one battery that went dead (it had run almost dry). I refilled with just distilled water and trickle charged it. It ran for another 6 months or so before finally (and suddenly) dying. Some batteries recover with trickle charging, but they never quite fully recover completely again if they are allowed to completely discharge. I have read that once a battery is discharged, it is damaged. So your battery may recover again, but since it has discharged twice it is now probably a throw away.

I have had a battery fail an RACQ analyser test - but the guy then said it will probably be OK (as if he didn't believe the results anyway) once charged - and it was for another 6 months and then it died for good.

Black51

I ran into a similar "all-or-nothing" problem last year. Very frustrating. Everything electrical was fine. At the same time, I had a bad starter (solenoid stick). I changed starters and haven't had that problem since. I'm still not positive if that's what was causing my battery problem. And yes, I did get a new battery. So the battery wasn't the problem since the new one would do the same "all-or-nothing" thing with the old starter.

Ronin-951

Internal plate strap could be fractured. Dont know how the RACQ does a test, but a 'Load' test to 300+ amps is the only way to be sure of a good battery. Fractures do happen even with new batteries, and the battery can still read 13.2 vdc, just can't pull the amps.

Black51

Well all is well (except for the 7+ feet of snow on the ground) with my car.

racerxrick

I just put in a new battery...the old one was dated March of 2001! It never failed. However I didn't like the way the starter dragged after the car had been sitting. Figured it was $100 of insurance.

Sorry if i didn't really contribute to a solution for you.

AScholtes

I had this problem on an old truck I used to own. I would disconnect the ground and reconnect it and it would start right up. My assumption was that I was getting a poor ground or something... I would sayt he same in your case. Next time it happens, disconnect and reconnect the ground on the battery and try to start the car... if it starts, time to do some grounding... JMO..

Chris White

How long is ‘a short while’?

A failing fan relay can turn the cooling fans on full blast without a key in the ignition – that will suck the life out of a battery!

Mark944na86

The RACQ test involves what looks like a handheld digital multimeter. It's a bit more sophisticated then that though, since it actually prints out the test results.

But it's certainly not drawing 300A! When I asked the guys how it works, since it obviously wasn't doing a full charge/discharge test, neither was entirely sure himself. I got the impression from their comments that it was measuring resistance across the plates as an indication of cell "health". An indicative test, but not conclusive I suspect (particularly since the battery "appears" normal when it is charged up... it just appears to hit the "brick wall" at a certain level of discharge.)

I don't know what the analyser would read in that condition... it had been trickle charged for a short time in both cases before the tests were done.

If the battery had a fracture as you suggest, would it work normally up until a certain discharge point, where suddenly there would be no current available at all, or would it be impaired at all charge levels?

Mark944na86

I'll try that if it happens again... certainly can't hurt!

Mark944na86

About 30 mins.
That first time, I was actually sitting in the car for most of that time, waiting to pick someone up from a train station (the train was late).

It was wet weather, and I had been driving with lights, wipers, and aircon on, which I later found was enough to cause a net drain on the battery, even with the car running. That's what I figured in that particular case led to the low battery state to start with (and why I subsequently upgraded the alternator circuit).

When I went to start the car, it did actually come on for a about a second (dash lights end everything), and then died. It was so dead (except for the LCD clock) that at first I thought I'd fried the DME with a short with all the wet weather. It didn't actually occur to me that the battery had gone flat, because I'd never experienced a battery let go like that before (I was used to something more along the lines of Rick's account above.)

When I got the car running by a jump start, I was surprised the battery started to behave fairly normally without even too much of an extensive recharge. I did do some follow-up tests by measuring the charging voltage at the battery when the car was running, and it was marginal with lights etc. all off, but I saw that when all the accessories were on the voltage was less than the minimum charging voltage of about 13.3V. So that's when I ordered a new alternator, and a uprated regulator to boot.

That worked, at least to the extent I was seeing healthier charging voltages at the battery terminals with the car running, and I thought maybe I'd seem the last of the problem until it happened again recently. In that case, the car had been sitting for more than a week, so I suspect that might have been the reason the battery charge was getting down.

In any case, I was parked down at the supermarket when it just wouldn't start (again, it was off for about 30mins or so), but this time I got my wife to come down to give me a jump start to get it going again. By the time I had driven it home, about 5 mins away, it had enough charge to crank and start again! Strange. I called the RACQ to get them to come out and test it again, and their analyser still said it was OK (but needed charging).

So I put it on the trickle charger for a few hours to get it back to whatever charge it is capable of holding now. And then I did some googling on calcium batteries, and found out some interesting stuff, but nothing that seem to relate to my problem.

I've driven it a few times since and it *seems* perfectly normal again (although obviously I don't really trust it).

Finally I thought I would bother my friends at Rennlist to get their opinion of what might be going on.

So here we are.