[nazali]

txs Aerobod, would you be kind enough, to post some pictures of yours so I can compare,
I'm going to be getting a good light tomorrow and see what I can see.

[aerobod]

Originally Posted by nazali

txs Aerobod, would you be kind enough, to post some pictures of yours so I can compare,
I'm going to be getting a good light tomorrow and see what I can see.

Sorry, I’m not at home at the moment for the next week.

[nazali]

NP,
I'm going to my car guy, getting them to load test the battery and check for drains, also going to pickup a windscreen (shield) to stop water run off under the hood, till I clear my garage,

I'll have a good look around tomorrow

txs appreciated !

Originally Posted by aerobod

Sorry, I’m not at home at the moment for the next week.

[freakystyly]

I was driving in eco mode for a change today.

I noticed when coasting the "Charging" bar only fills halfway. When braking in gear the bar fills completely. When braking out of gear again only halfway.

Maybe we have regenerative braking for our huge 12V batteries?

And then eco mode went away

[nazali]

I read the same thing,
I've never used eco mode, that blue bar fills all the way !

Originally Posted by freakystyly

I was driving in eco mode for a change today.

I noticed when coasting the "Charging" bar only fills halfway. When braking in gear the bar fills completely. When braking out of gear again only halfway.

Maybe we have regenerative braking for our huge 12V batteries?

And then eco mode went away

[jzeiler4]

There is no regenerative braking on the 2 series as there are no motors hooked up to the wheels. All that blue bar does is indicate when the "brain" of the car allows the alternator to produce the maximum voltage to charge the battery. Otherwise the "Brain" holds the alternator to a lower voltage so as to not suck as much power from the engine.

[nazali]

I'm totally lost now, looking at the previous threads, on alternators nd charging, this BMW stuff has got my head in a spin, SO take Saturday

Car was charged (morning), drove 50km highway, mix of speeds, tech did a battery test/loaded the battery, said battery was holding a charge, and charging circuit was fine, so how come a nearly 80km drive back to a shop near home had my car failing to start ?
After pressing, pressing , pressing, it started, got home and had to put it on a charger, that's not a car where it's sitting overnight, or having sat doing a few km's ? with a parasitic charge ? That's a fully charged and confirmed battery which died after a load test and a 80km drive home of some fast driving and slow driving.

[pikcachu]

Originally Posted by nazali

I'm totally lost now, looking at the previous threads, on alternators nd charging, this BMW stuff has got my head in a spin, SO take Saturday

Car was charged (morning), drove 50km highway, mix of speeds, tech did a battery test/loaded the battery, said battery was holding a charge, and charging circuit was fine, so how come a nearly 80km drive back to a shop near home had my car failing to start ?
After pressing, pressing , pressing, it started, got home and had to put it on a charger, that's not a car where it's sitting overnight, or having sat doing a few km's ? with a parasitic charge ? That's a fully charged and confirmed battery which died after a load test and a 80km drive home of some fast driving and slow driving.

pressing, pressing what?

was it cranking ? maybe it's the starter that is defective ?

[nazali]

oh the start button, so got into the car, the dash came alive (or wait I'm not sure if the //M) came up on the dash, can't remember, that usually comes up, I though. foot on brake, pressed the start button (1) nothing nothing on display , pressed start button again (2) something partial came on and went , tried again (3) same kinda came up, (4) started up on 4th press.

When pressing the start button, no "noise", no motor whirring, no, clicking, nothing, only on 3rd or 4th do you hear a clicking or starter type noise

Then when it starts up, I always get the following error message on the screen, "steering error pls contact BMW" and "soft top not locked" after driving, both go away eventually

As this happens quite often, I'll try and record it

HTH

Originally Posted by pikcachu

pressing, pressing what?

was it cranking ? maybe it's the starter that is defective ?

[pikcachu]

Originally Posted by nazali

oh the start button, so got into the car, the dash came alive (or wait I'm not sure if the //M) came up on the dash, can't remember, that usually comes up, I though. foot on brake, pressed the start button (1) nothing nothing on display , pressed start button again (2) something partial came on and went , tried again (3) same kinda came up, (4) started up on 4th press.

When pressing the start button, no "noise", no motor whirring, no, clicking, nothing, only on 3rd or 4th do you hear a clicking or starter type noise

As this happens quite often, I'll try and record it

HTH

Ok so the battery then it's not dead.

You see the dash lights and I suppose your headlights also work

Seems like your issue is probably the starter

[albertw]

I think your most important clue is that the charger jumped from an early stage of charge to fully charged when you did . . . something. As usual, you didn't actually say what you did, so I'm not willing to guess beyond saying it sounds like you have an intermittent defect somewhere between the battery and the charging points you used.

[nazali]

I want to investigate it further, had the charger on from 3pm till this morning, 7am. charger did not get into the last phase (step 7 on the charger) stayed on step 4, which might be right.

It's a 4.3 amp, wondering if whatever is failing it's not man enough to keep up, was planning on getting a 6a charger.

It's also doing this mainly when putting hood up or down etc, problem it's getting cold now, so horrible working outside, may have to wait till saturday. As I don't wanna mess around with the car too much, in case.

Planning on having it on a charger all week every day, if you remember, I mentioned about water, well last night it rained

[nazali]

I DO APPRECIATE ALL YOUR REPLIES
Makes me feel not so on my own !
and good for bouncing ideas about

[albertw]

Originally Posted by nazali

I want to investigate it further, had the charger on from 3pm till this morning, 7am. charger did not get into the last phase (step 7 on the charger) stayed on step 4, which might be right.

It's a 4.3 amp, wondering if whatever is failing it's not man enough to keep up, was planning on getting a 6a charger.

It's also doing this mainly when putting hood up or down etc, problem it's getting cold now, so horrible working outside, may have to wait till saturday. As I don't wanna mess around with the car too much, in case.

Planning on having it on a charger all week every day, if you remember, I mentioned about water, well last night it rained

I've been following this thread mainly because your logic is so entertaining. This is the best yet! The charger that most people use and BMW rebrands as their own isn't powerful enough for your car, so you need a better charger. Wow!

If your description is accurate (always a big uncertainty), you have a current leak somewhere, so the current does not decrease far enough as the battery approaches full charge. That's why the charger won't indicate full charge. If slamming the hood down fixes the current leak, then you have some sort of mechanical problem in the wiring or electronics. Bad connection? A relay that is sticky? Who knows?

I think this problem is way beyond your pay grade. (Mine too.) I would take it to a professional and make sure they keep the car long enough to see the problem, since it appears to be intermittent.

[nazali]

Honestly, I'm usually better, though you wouldn't believe it.

My logic always starts at "what was the last thing to happen to cause the issue" I work in IT, I did some college I'd like to think I'm not dumb.

At this point, I am not taking any comments (however tongue in cheek) to heart.

My first port of call was BMW and they said I wasn't driving the car enough. Like tell me what do I do, I even gave a full timeline of what I did and didn't do.

Your absolutely right on the charger thing, I only stumbled across this because I was looking up specs for chargers, Batterybank.com had a good way of calculating things, for my 92Ah battery say's charger should be at least a 10'th aka 10amps, apparently a 6amp is much better than a 4.3 amp

Like how am I supposed to know ? But yes you are right.

Your right, this is well over my paygrade, wanna do as much as I can, because when BMW tell me I'm not driving the car enough I can tell them to stroll on.

Bonnet slam no longer works, I actually took a rubber mallet, gently tapping the engine bodywork,

sincerely thank you for your reply

Originally Posted by albertw

I've been following this thread mainly because your logic is so entertaining. This is the best yet! The charger that most people use and BMW rebrands as their own isn't powerful enough for your car, so you need a better charger. Wow!

If your description is accurate (always a big uncertainty), you have a current leak somewhere, so the current does not decrease far enough as the battery approaches full charge. That's why the charger won't indicate full charge. If slamming the hood down fixes the current leak, then you have some sort of mechanical problem in the wiring or electronics. Bad connection? A relay that is sticky? Who knows?

I think this problem is way beyond your pay grade. (Mine too.) I would take it to a professional and make sure they keep the car long enough to see the problem, since it appears to be intermittent.

[nazali]

My Game plan:

Can't do anything till the weekend.

1> Till Friday, everyday car on trickle charger when I get home, 4pm-6am
2> Saturday depending on weather, doing the following.

i> The dash cam cabling is still in there, the supply cables removed, but not sure where they have stuck the earth, so going to remove panels and make sure where they have connected the earth isn't a problem

ii> Putting my DVM on and monitoring the surface charge getting into the engine bay and giving all the cable a good tug bang and pull

iii> Getting a 7amp charger/trickle charger, on the battery, getting into ISTA and pulling codes and battery stats, charge, shorts etc

iv> Planning on removing the cables, charging the battery in situ
OR
v> pulling negative to pull all the voltage off the modules in case something needs resetting (about an hour)

vi> Going to try pouring water on the windscreen simulating heavy rain and monitor the voltage on the DVM

vii> was thinking of doing a parasitic draw test, to see how much its drawing

Viii> was thinking of getting a battery load tester and OBD tester, and checking the load of the battery of the car.

ix> also thinking of spraying the cables in the gulley in WD40 and also the battery connectiong near the points a layer of dilectric grease

thoughts do shout out

[albertw]

vii should be first, and you should monitor it as you try the various things you've listed. Otherwise, how will you know whether anything made any difference? You should find out the normal current draw from the battery when the ignition is off, to see if the car is in the high draw state (since that seems to be intermittent).

ii doesn't make much sense. If you have a leak to ground, the resistance must be high enough to limit the current to a couple amps or you wouldn't be able to charge the battery with your charger. That's not enough current draw to make much difference to the voltage of a fully charged battery. (It will take a couple days to kill a 92 amp-hour battery.) I suppose you could hook up various resistors to the isolated battery to see what the voltage drop is for a range of currents, but that's an indirect approach to what you need to monitor.

vi doesn't make much sense to me. If the water itself causes a short to ground, using the numbers above the short has to dissipate roughly 25 watts. That will evaporate the water long before the battery will be depleted. More likely, to me, is that water causes a poorly sealed relay to stick and leave some load on that should be off when the engine is off. Simply pouring on water and looking at voltage will not detect that. You need one or more start - stop cycles to induce the problem, and the relay may not fail immediately. If it's just condensation from high humidity that causes the problem, you may not get any water on the relay with your pour test. Even more likely is something no one here has thought of yet.

[nazali]

The reason I'm thinking Vi ) pour test,

on one of the days, the car bonnet was wet, as I lifted the bonnet, water went everywhere, at the time I connected my DVM up and it showed 12.xx, but literally before my eyes, it dropped to 11, to 10, 9 then I panicked and found car wouldnt start.

now "true" this was when that bloody thing had blocked up so the water may have gone everywhere..

This morning, please note....

Last night the car was fully charged (on stage 7), around, ooh, 9pm, when I came out this AM after and during some heavy rain, the charger had dropped to stage 3 or 4,

Now not sure if that was water OR something had woken the car up. BUT i think were expecting rain so I'm going to monitor that.

BTW, all week, car has started to get me to work, and got me home with no charge or jump at work, so the charge overnight has started the car tiwce on a drive of 12km's each way but it is being put on charge overnight.

The water thing is not valid, after that long run after the battery load test, dry as a whistle and car died

Originally Posted by albertw

vii should be first, and you should monitor it as you try the various things you've listed. Otherwise, how will you know whether anything made any difference? You should find out the normal current draw from the battery when the ignition is off, to see if the car is in the high draw state (since that seems to be intermittent).

ii doesn't make much sense. If you have a leak to ground, the resistance must be high enough to limit the current to a couple amps or you wouldn't be able to charge the battery with your charger. That's not enough current draw to make much difference to the voltage of a fully charged battery. (It will take a couple days to kill a 92 amp-hour battery.) I suppose you could hook up various resistors to the isolated battery to see what the voltage drop is for a range of currents, but that's an indirect approach to what you need to monitor.

vi doesn't make much sense to me. If the water itself causes a short to ground, using the numbers above the short has to dissipate roughly 25 watts. That will evaporate the water long before the battery will be depleted. More likely, to me, is that water causes a poorly sealed relay to stick and leave some load on that should be off when the engine is off. Simply pouring on water and looking at voltage will not detect that. You need one or more start - stop cycles to induce the problem, and the relay may not fail immediately. If it's just condensation from high humidity that causes the problem, you may not get any water on the relay with your pour test. Even more likely is something no one here has thought of yet.

[nazali]

In thinking also, the key event when car died was the dash cam killing the battery, I think the minimum was 11.3volts it took it down to

I have been reading that once a battery is badly discharged they are damaged

Off load fully charged my battery is 12.4x volts should it not be 12.6 ?

I'm wondering how likly though all tests's show the battery is ok, that it isn't considering the constant demands of the car

[nazali]

another thought on BMW's new "chrging the battery"
again I read that BMW's newly, only charge on braking and coasting, so going out on a long run, doesnt do much. "citation needed"

[nazali]

my new best friend and driving buddy is my NOCO, don't go anywhere without it, I leave it in the house at night, there supposed to be good in all weather, I don't take a chance

[nazali]

picking this up for Friday's overnight charge

MotoMaster Simple Series 6A Battery Charger & Maintainer

Fully automatic, microprocessor-controlled 6 step charging process
Recommended for charging batteries rated 20 to 120 Ah
Suitable for all 12-volt lead acid battery chemistries including flooded (wet), AGM
Built-in safety protections include reverse polarity, short circuit, open circuit
Follow charging progress via simple 25%-50%-75%-100%
Energy efficient switch-mode technology
Special low-temp insulation keeps cables flexible even in extreme cold temperatures
Includes battery clamps and ring terminal quick connector leads