Member Since: 27 Jul 2014
Location: Warsaw/Toronto
Posts: 64
Charging woes
Meant to post in the D3 Technical ... sorry
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Hi all,
I've recently had a major failure - saw the voltage dropping until xmas lights and finally full out stoppage.
Thanks to the forum I managed to narrow down the issue to a faulty tensioner on the AUX belt. Or so I thought.
After having replaced both tensioners and the aux belt, I charged the battery a bit it hovered around 12.3V.
This morning on startup the battery ready 11.8 but the car started fine.
This is what greeted me during my morning drive
Click image to enlarge
I have several suspects any additional insight is welcome.
1) Old battery - LR original so I suspect it was never changed = 6years old
2) parasitic drain from the new steering wheel
3) bad alternator
4) take it for a longer drive... see if it recovers - kind of like taking the battery out and recharging.
Your thoughts?
Jacob
13th Oct 2015 10:36 am
Robbie
Member Since: 05 Feb 2006
Location: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Posts: 17932
Great graph - very helpful.
Bad alternator.
Land Rover - Turning Drivers into Mechanics Since 1948
Member Since: 27 Jul 2014
Location: Warsaw/Toronto
Posts: 64
Happy times - I have to take it all apart again...
Was hoping it would be something else as it was all good last night driving around was around 14.4V and idle at 13.5V
Thanks for the reply.
J.
13th Oct 2015 11:04 am
pinchy
Member Since: 27 Jul 2014
Location: Warsaw/Toronto
Posts: 64
Can I start the car using the existing battery - unhook it and measure the voltage flow?
This would hopefully narrow down if the battery is causing issues.
I would probably need to take care of spikes...
J.
13th Oct 2015 11:23 am
pinchy
Member Since: 27 Jul 2014
Location: Warsaw/Toronto
Posts: 64
I took it for another spin and it just behaves irradically - sort of.
Low voltage at the beginning but the longer I drove the higher it climbed and after about 5 minutes cruising on the freeway it capped at 14.0 - 14.1V ...
When I parked the car for a few minutes the Voltage on the battery had already dropped. Clearly visible in the diagram.
Click image to enlarge
13th Oct 2015 3:01 pm
L319
Member Since: 14 Dec 2013
Location: Herefordshire
Posts: 2081
Not sure if I understand your last but one post about unhooking the battery but do not disconnect the battery with the engine running.
13th Oct 2015 3:59 pm
pinchy
Member Since: 27 Jul 2014
Location: Warsaw/Toronto
Posts: 64
Things just got more weird over the last two days
I managed to get home with just over 10.5V left on the battery. Next morning the battery was completely dead. I took it out of the car left is standing in the garage and to my surprise it recharged itself to 6.8V
I'm no bettery wiz but it seemed strange.
Took the alternator out and dropped it off at a shop that fixes them, they showed me the issue with the diodes and said they will rebuild and improve the unit happy times.
Since the battery is acting all weird I'm swapping it for an Exide anyways, just to be sure.
You can't really check the charge from the alternator because it's controlled by the ecu, if it's all over the place when your checking it, then you need to change the alternator .
Flack
15th Oct 2015 10:32 am
Robbie
Member Since: 05 Feb 2006
Location: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Posts: 17932
There was zero doubt when I called the alternator as bust as the voltage was proportional to RPM.
This showed that the alternator was knackered, that the ECU was demanding as much as it could get and, coincidentally, showed that your belt was not slipping.
Land Rover - Turning Drivers into Mechanics Since 1948
Happy to be on the road again - was bit cramped in wife's car.
Thanks for the suggestions.
J.
15th Oct 2015 10:56 pm
drivesafe
Member Since: 23 Feb 2006
Location: Gold Coast, Australia
Posts: 867
pinchy wrote:
Things just got more weird over the last two days
I managed to get home with just over 10.5V left on the battery. Next morning the battery was completely dead. I took it out of the car left is standing in the garage and to my surprise it recharged itself to 6.8V
Hi pinchy, your battery didn’t actually recharge itself. It would need to get a voltage rise to over 10.5v to actually indicate it still had some charged capacity.
Even if you could have recharged your battery, the fact your battery was discharged so low, it is pretty safe bet it was damaged by such a low discharge.
So replacing it was a good move.2008 TDV8 RR Lux + 2009 D4 2.7
16th Oct 2015 2:25 am
Robbie
Member Since: 05 Feb 2006
Location: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Posts: 17932
Quite a pleasing change change from the first to the last graph.
Good result.
Land Rover - Turning Drivers into Mechanics Since 1948
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