[Oisin]

Parked the car for the first time for more than 1 day this week (monday -> tonight) since before xmas, and found the car wouldnt start, again. it had more juice in it than it did on previous discharges but still didnt have enough to turn herself over.

seems now that if the car gets a running every day, that it will hold the charge, but leave it more than 2 days, and its gone!,

Again, a lot of money has been thrown at this problem, and nothing seems to work, and theres only so many hills i can park the car on in Cork!!!

Gonna have to start removing the positive cable from the battery now....

New Battery, newish Alternator, new positive cable, car has been multimetered to death!

Any bright sparks out there? (sparks get it! (......ill get my coat)

Tanks!

(And if anyone knows Java programming I could do wit some help in that too!!)

 

[JMS]

Any chance the battery could be faulty eventhough it's new, did you check the water level inside it?
Are the connections tight? Not trying to be smart, but did you re-connect the boot light again, which might still be draining power?
It's hard to know really isn't it, you seem to have just about everything checked at this stage. You say the alternator is pretty new, don't suppose the voltage regulator could be giving trouble? Not sure myself but maybe it's something you could check if everything else seems ok

. Hope it works out for you anyway.

 

[Plane]

When the igmition is off are you getting a drain from the battery?

Edit: or the ignition either

 

[Steve]

Not sure if this will be of any help to you... but have you checked the starter motor? A Transit in work was doing the same thing (eating batteries), looked like it was deffo an alternator problem but turned out that the charge was being lost through the starter

 

[Oisin]

the starter is definitely something i could have a look at, and the ignition hasnt been looked at.

But apart from that, the old battery, which was only a year old, started to drain the same as the new one (which means i bought a battery for nothing!) And the alternator is from a friends gti which was working perfectly when i took it from his car.

how would you go about checking the ignition and starter? Wouldnt you know by checking the battery anyway?

 

[GSBellew]

Used to have this problem on my G40 and it drove me mad.

What I did in the end was disconnect all the leads from the +ve battery terminal, then test them one at a time to see it there was a drain on any of them with everything switched off, isolated the one with the drain on it, left it disconnected, connected the rest and basically checked to see what was not working, that being the faulty circuit.

It turned out to be the ECU relay which was sticking leaving the ecu switched on all the time draining the battery. One relay from VW later and years of push starting / disconnecting the battery were over

 

[Oisin]

good idea gs,

but how did you connect everyhting seperately? sure theres only the one cable on the + terminal. dont fancy whogeebaaing everything (like the starter!)

will definitely try this if i can figure out how, see its such a small drain that over the space of 1days it mightnt drain 25% of the battery.

 

[GSBellew]

QUOTE (Oisin @ Jan 13 2006, 10:57 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>good idea gs,

but how did you connect everyhting seperately? sure theres only the one cable on the + terminal. dont fancy whogeebaaing everything (like the starter!)

will definitely try this if i can figure out how, see its such a small drain that over the space of 1days it mightnt drain 25% of the battery.

Ah, right, on the Polo it has a few seperate wires that connect together at the +ve terminal, if you only have the one your best bet is to try removing one fuse / relay at a time while someone measures the current untill you find the culpret.

I had 0.2 of an amp of a drain and that was enough to kill the battery if the car was not driven every day

 

[98MK1]

Lol, this has started happening me recently too..... I could've left my parkies on for 9+Hours (dont say you've never done it!) and still have enough juice to start her. Everything was perfect till I changed the starter.... Now, give it a day and its push push time! Did you change the starter recently?

 

[Oisin]

@98mk1 i dont know ur name, but i think that im having the same problem, mick in autosystems found that a bolt for holding the starter was loose in the car when it was in there before xmas, and ive found that on occasion, roll starting the car results in only the engine running (absolutely nothing else in the car recieves power) So that something to look at, think i might take it back to autowerks and have em look at it again, paid enough the first time for it not to be fixed!

 

[marv]

Nothing worse than having to reverse push start your car. I fell victim to this and now i always park facing out of any space. eventually i got the alternator re conditioned and all is well again

 

[98MK1]

QUOTE (Oisin @ Jan 14 2006, 11:30 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>@98mk1 i dont know ur name, but i think that im having the same problem, mick in autosystems found that a bolt for holding the starter was loose in the car when it was in there before xmas, and ive found that on occasion, roll starting the car results in only the engine running (absolutely nothing else in the car recieves power) So that something to look at, think i might take it back to autowerks and have em look at it again, paid enough the first time for it not to be fixed!

Got it sorted!
Sorry about the delay...narrowband is a curse. And is getting slower every day....

turns out I had the starter wired wrong. It was dark when I did it, and the starter did work perfectly! The solenoid wires on the replacement had different connections, and didn't share the earth as it did on the one that came out/burnt out! It was blowing the 'horn/cig lighter/voltmeter/handbrake light' fuse when the engine revved... not anymore. Alls good again, I missed my horns! Nothing worse than a learner rolling back down the hill infront of you in traffic and you cant blow em out of it......
Hope this helps.....we live and learn

Edit: Name's Garrett!

 

[98MK1]

@ Oisin, Did you get this sorted?

 

[Alfaguy]

I think I may have the same problem with my GTi Mk II. I disconnect the battery every time I leave it in the garage now. It seems to be a regular problem with old cars. I have to do the same on my Alfasud and TR6.

 

[Oisin]

Havent fixed it yet, but it seems to be flying away fine again for no reason. Alternator was changed and checked, battery was changed with new, 200quid in autowerks in midleton on quaranteeing the wiring wasnt a problem (plus timing), the onyl thing i really noticed was unplugging the boot light.
But since i drive the car spiradically during the week, sometimes going 5days, others 2days without starting it, its hard to judge if its the cause.

Another usual suspect is the starter, but the gearbox is being changed in a few weeks and will change the starter too, so.. ill let u know then!

 

[98MK1]

My battery dying problem has resurfaced, and my starter's shagged by the sounds of it...
The battery's getting 12.8V when multimetered, 14.2V when charging? But wont start and KILLS the battery trying within minutes.

Did you get your issue fixed in the end Oisin? What was it?
Has anyone ever heard of a faulty alternator, of fan switch, causing the battery to discharge?

 

[DaveQ]

probably obvious answers here but what the hell

Is it a new radio in it? I seen a radio someone put in a clio before and had the switched live and permanent mixed up or something dont know what exactly they done but it drained the battery.

Also seen before that a dodgy boot light switch was leaving the boot light on and draining the battery.

 

[Geo]

Your battery could be at fault, you need to get it tested with a proper battery tester that applies a load across the terminals and checks for a voltage drop. Even a battery that is practically shagged will still read 12+ Volts on a multimeter.

 

[98MK1]

QUOTE(DaveQ @ Nov 9 2007, 03:08 PM) [snapback]89791[/snapback] probably obvious answers here but what the hell

Is it a new radio in it? I seen a radio someone put in a clio before and had the switched live and permanent mixed up or something dont know what exactly they done but it drained the battery.

Also seen before that a dodgy boot light switch was leaving the boot light on and draining the battery.



These were one of the first two things I checked into. Had the cursed boot light (in my MK1!!!!!! Who's jealous??

) problem before... you just dont think to look in the boot sometimes!! Its so far away from the battery...

They're both ok.

QUOTE

Your battery could be at fault, you need to get it tested with a proper battery tester that applies a load across the terminals and checks for a voltage drop. Even a battery that is practically shagged will still read 12+ Volts on a multimeter.



THIS is good info to know though. Battery tester.

 

[mk2mark]

Was going to say check the voltage regulator on the alternator (changed mine today for the same problem), but you changed the alternator already. What's the Java problem?