Lost soft close on boot
 

As per title, the soft close doesn't work anymore no matter how many times I lock / unlock the car and open / shut the boot. It just doesn't do the gentle pull down anymore.

I am having battery issues at the moment, (I get the Energy management Battery level warning) so don't know if this is related.

Does the soft close work on the other doors?
 

There's a few things that won't work when battery manager starts cutting consumers.

I know from my experiences that the comfort access is one of them.

If you battery is fully charged then just change the last digit on the serial number to fool the manager into thinking its a new battery.

It should then at least start working again if it was just indeed an issue with the battery manager

Only my boot is soft close.

The issues happened Saturday morning, started the '8 up and MMI didn't work - no screen no music no warnings.

About 2 mins later the MMI screen moved up and the radio came on, but there was an audible pop coming from the speakers then a click from a relay in the boot. The MMI screen started blanking and resetting once every two mins or so.... Just what I needed on a busy weekend!

I did what I had to do then parked up, engine off, and got VCDS. Battery now was at 40% and the clicking was still going (probably the Bose DSP switching on / off and draining the battery)

http://i.imgur.com/TVb7Ip9.jpg

At this stage I couldn't access any of the modules on the MOST loop in VCDS and the MMI would not work in the car, either the Bose DSP is faulting or the energy management has turned it off.

I was worried I'd get a flat battery so drove the car to parents driveway where I started to investigate the MOST modules, as I thought that was the issue. I removed the Bose DSP from the loop and all was ok, no relay clicking & MMI behaved normal now just without sound. Added it back into the MOST loop and no MMI problems, sound is normal no audible pop.

Scratch my head a bit and deduce it's probably a battery issue, which is where I had to leave the problem for now. I'll get a charger on the battery tomorrow evening and take it from there. Hopefully will get the soft close boot back +++

Looking at your battery voltage on screenshot of VCDS it is empty. Empty battery voltage varies a bit depending on source of information and battery type, make but generally accepted empty voltage is 11.9V for flooded lead acid battery. As yours is showing 11.65V consider it fully discharged. You can probably still start car with that voltage but the battery is working on reserve capacity and it is deteriorating considerably at that low stage of charge. Fully charged battery should have resting voltage around 12.6V

Edit:

By the way I think 40% is battery condition not charge level. So fully charged battery has 40% of original fully charged capacity/CCA left not that it is 40% charged at the moment. Normally I would say you need to replace battery when it gets to 50% health for summer use or 60% for winter use.

Do you think it is an electronic problem or could it be a coincidence that the spring has snapped? There is a spring similar to one in a biro pen and the hook on one end snaps off with fret wear - meaning the mechanism above the bumper (not in the boot the lid) doesn't work anymore. It is a common problem. there is a thread with photos somewhere.

Thanks Snap, very useful indeed. I shall take a look at it and try to find that thread +++

Yes very common issue. Same spring snapped on mine, but i found it behind the trim and made a new loop at the end and fitted back no problems since.

Had the afternoon to tinker with the '8 and sorted the battery. Soft close on the boot started working once again so can only assume it was an energy management issue. +++

Must be the time of year. My soft close did this a couple of years ago and cleared itself and has been working fine since until this morning when it decided to not pull the boot lid down which meant I had to drive about with it 'half cocked' so to speak. Then after a few times opened and closed it was all working again. I'm now going out to investigate



Just back in after having a look at this, not really sure what happened this morning but as it is all working now it's impossible to trace a fault or find the cause. I stripped out the trim, and everything on the locking mechanism looked to be in place, no broken spring and all moving as it should. I cleaned the sliding parts and applied some light grease, not much more I can do at the moment...Just have to wait and see

Exactly the same as me. Glad yours has started working once again +++