PM Bites Me
 

It's been very cold in Wisconsin recently, the 996 has been slow to start, so I decide to do preventative maintenance, and replace my battery before it leaves me stranded somewhere. So, I go to Auto Zone today at lunch and have a new battery installed (Duralast AGM H6). Car starts fine, but gauge cluster is dead! Headlights, directionals, radio, HVAC all work, but nothing in the gauges. The guy who installed didn't know why, I checked the relevant fuses with him, they all looked fine. He said to take it in and if it was something he did they will cover it. I'm really not looking forward to having to battle with an Auto Zone manager about this. He did use a power source at the OBDII port which is something I've never done. In general, he seemed careful, looked like he knew what he was doing, but no way I believe it's coincidence that my cluster died randomly. I'll take it to the dealer tonight, will see what they say the problem/cause is. Stay tuned. Really frustrating that I try and do things right, rarely ever let anyone else touch the 911, and this happens.

I've heard of this happening before. It will either come back to life on it's own within a few key cycles, or you may need to disconnect the battery for a minute or two and try again.

Your first mistake was taking it to Autozone. Second is letting someone replace your battery, something pretty trivial that you could've done. If you do say anything to them and there are $$ involved, they are gonna say there is no proof that hooking up a battery would cause that. But yeah try recycling the power and see what happens.

I've tried 3 cycles, when I leave work, it will be 4. It would be nice if you are right.

Why is auto zone a bad place to buy a battery? I don't see the point in paying for a dealer battery. If figured since they offer free install, why not? It saves me the troubles of going back to dispose of my old battery.

I'm running an Autozone battery...I don't see any reason to pay 3X more for a box of lead and acid with a Porsche sticker on the outside...

Unhook the battery for a couple minutes and hook it back up. If things still don't work, you may have an issue.

Check your battery connection to see if there might me a smaller, secondary wire at the cable connection on the Positive terminal. If there is, it may the source of continuous 12V power when the car isn't running, to support the clock, radio presets, alarm, etc. It is a possibility that wire may have been damaged during the battery installation.

I keyed on again after work, still nothing. Disconnected the lead for about 5 min, reconnected and still nothing. There is only 1 wire for each terminal post. Sometimes electrical problems are as easy to fix as a restart, but doesn't look like that's the case this time. I also noticed the mirror didn't tilt when in reverse, and it seems only the high beams work, not the low. It's at the dealer now. I can tell already it will be fun to battle Auto Zone about this. Almost as fun as battling with my medical insurance which isn't paying for my routine yearly preventative ophthalmologist visit.

I wonder if the AutoZone dude initially reversed the polarity when installing the new battery. Given how the terminals are configured, this would take a special kind of stupid, but...

Anyway, unless the battery has something other than 12 volts in it, the battery isn't to blame.

I never made any references to buying at the dealer but there are many other non dealer shops that carry better brands like Interstate and such. Problem with Autozone batteries is a crap shoot as their QC is poor. You might luck out with a trouble free one or you might get a lemon that could leave you stranded. Now all of a sudden, the price savings doesn't really seem worth it in wasted time and towing charges.

I along with many others have been let down with Autozone batteries. But stupid me, I was willing to give it a benefit of the doubt not once but 3 times with similiar results. YYMV depending on your environment(ie: cold regions and such) and luck of the draw. All I know is they lost me as a customer awhile ago when it comes to batteries.

My battery had been cranking less than optimal for a while. After the cold snap in Houston last week it died as well. After researching on RL, I too went to Autozone and got a Platinum Duralast. Brought my old core along to save $15.

Hooked it up and all worked well. However, I didn't hook it up in right order (+) then (-), nor did I reset the DME. So later that night, disconnected and went through the correct process. I didn't seem to have any problems but I didn't want to find out later that I missed a step. Also, had to reset window height, change from KM/H to MPH, clock, and radio. Starts good now.

The battery that failed was an Interstate, BTW. Right at 3 YO.

The three Duralast I've had went at 2 months, 13 months, 26 months on the 5yr battery. They could not revive(recharge) it. Warranty did cover it but not the lost time or towing charges.

3yo is avg in my experience with German cars in particular as they seem to have more gadgets that drain the battery.

It's not that autozone battery's are bad, it's
The numb nuts who work there

What did they plug into the OBDII port?

FYI
http://www.renntech.org/forums/topic...gauge-cluster/