Wtf? Battery dying
 

Morning chaps and chapettes.

Well, yesterday I woke to a fully discharged battery, no explanation, nothing. Got aa out, and diagnosis was that battery was fine. Used car for a couple of short trips yesterday, and all was good.

This morning, I've got the same problem. No battery, so no starty :-(

Has anyone else experienced this?

Some modules may not be sleeping due to crashing.
That is one of the fixes for the MMI updates.
Have you had these updates?

The car is supposed to protect itself from this by shutting stuff off in stages.
Hopefully others will be able to chime in with their experiences.

Could be that the battery has reached end of life.. The D3 is very sensitive to a battery that's starting to die. When it's pretty much done, you'll get regular occurences of this until you replace it.

Might be worth getting one of those booster kits just in case you get stranded, but it's usually a long stop that it does it over rather than an hour or two.

I have a battery problem with mine.

In normal use, the car is fine and the battery display shows that all is fine and that the car has 100% available. When the temperature drops severely overnight and is frosty, the car will only let me open it with the remote button and using the key in the ignition.

This issue is not happening now as it is warmer. I was putting the issue down to frost near the sensors on the door handles. I took the car into Audi and they did a free Winter check for me which came up as all ok. As I had already told them that there was an issue, they then ran diagnostics and determined that the battery died when a serious load was required. The charts showed a failure.

The Audi Dealer went on to say that I owed them £50 for diagnosis time. I complained saying that this was a charge that was not agreed and that if a Winter check said the battery was fine, why does it fail a proper check that you pay for...... they removed the charge - Stealers..... give them an inch and they WILL take a mile.

The upshot of what I am saying is that the car does require a lot of the battery power to run its systems and turn it over. Even if the battery operates normally most of the time without dying it is not necessarily ok.

My car battery has not failed again, but I know that the battery needs changing - £250 from Audi and £110 from my local tyre place..... go figure

017 is the battery number for the A8 and power output seems to range from 88Ah to 100Ah depending on manufacturer. I'm almost certain however that the Bosch S5 020 battery will fit (please check for yourself before ordering) and this beast has an output of 110Ah. They are available from Eurocarparts and there are plenty codes offering up to 30% discount bringing the price a fraction over £93.00 which has to be a bargain for such a battery

would be interesting to know if that battery fits ok in the D3 as it just doesnt quite fit in the D2. I went to a place called "the battery shop" in Swindon and they let me try both - it was about 20mm too long for the D2 recess so you have to go with the 100Ah batteries in the D2 +++

Current valid promo code for euro car parts is MIDMONTH30 to get 30% discount

Do D3's not need 'super speshul batteries' to talk to them? Or is that just that the controller needs to be told it has a new one?

I thought you just had to specify the battery in VAGcom to let the car know you had changed the battery etc

Never heard that before, there was a brand new battery fitted to my car when I bought it and it's an off the shelf Yuasa 017 battery

I was told by Audi that it had to be programmed, but my local garage where I spend a significant amount of money on tyres checked their systems, called the battery company and said that the system would learn the battery and at worst, they could log on with their software for only £45. That is still a massive saving on the Stealer price.

Sounds maybe like it just needs to be told it has a new battery then... Could be that it holds information on charge/discharge cycles and current drop off to shut systems down faster as it ages.

Good to know for us sootchucker owners that make batteries work harder.

have a look at this - it might help . . . .
http://wiki.ross-tech.com/wiki/index...ry_Replacement

My problem appears to have been down to a faulty brake light switch!!

Frigging things are too bloody clever for themselves!!!

had a bit of a laboured start a few days ago, this morning just a ticking noise, Mmi screen comes up slowly.

Ive long thought my battery was responsible for the "start engine within 3 minutes" message that i get now and again, but IVF said the battery was fine in january when i asked them to replace it.

baby was due yesterday, so on borrowed time and now have to decide if to replace it myself, or get the car started and get down to ivf.

What is likely to go wrong with the electrics if i change the battery without a backup power source, and anyone know what battery will fit in the D3, i want the highest power one i can get

i have vagcom so can probably fix electric errors and recode the battery myself

Eurocarparts link for the Bosch S5 battery, just make sure it fits first as it is the daddy of batteries

You need to enter the code battery15 for a 15% discount bringing the total to £113.17

Battery should be plug and play

As long as you don't short anything, you're good to go for the physical swap and re-code with VCDS.

thanks tony

All done, thanks guys
Europarts wasnt open today so got one in halfords the 019 model though rather than the 20, still a bosch s5 it looked fairly tight in there so thought the extra millimeters might not make it, with hindsight probably would have but didnt want to risk it

no issues afterwards, there wasnt a coding for bosch so left it how it was , just changed the serial number, reset the date and the windows and all looks like its working fine.

will have to wait and see if something else is the root cause

Funnily enough I've been looking to get a new battery for my D2 (PF S8) as although it's fine it is also quite old (nearly 10 years - I fitted it myself!) and I suspect it could fail any time.
(Luckily with the PF D2 all you do is swap them over, nothing else to do except re-enter the radio code. :D)

However I do have a PDF document downloaded from Bosch that details what batteries go with what car - I'll attach it here. As far as I can see the D3 has basically the same size battery as my D2 S8, and the Halfords 019 is correct; 020 would be too long. The standard size seems to be 353 long, 175 wide and 190 tall (mm).
I currently have a Bosch Silver 8A (part 0093 S5 880) and the recommendation now is for an S6 002 (same as for D3) or S5 013 (0092 S5 0130) so I'll presumably go for the S5 013 which happens to have not only slightly higher capacity and CCA than my current battery, but actually more than the S6 as well!

Hope the document is useful, it's a few years old but covers a wide range of car makers. :cool: