Di2 battery issues XT MTB

[leyorkie]

My battery is playing up and not holding a charge
Charge shows 5 bars but as soon as it operates it drops down to 3/4 bars, it did hold 5 bars when new. Ride yesterday and it dropped to 2 bars as soon as I started riding, after 3 hours use it was still holding 2 bars.
I’ve checked charging as I’ve seen that the usb needs to be 1 amp or more.
The battery is less than 2 years old so is still under warranty so last call will be back to the shop that sold the bike
Anybody had similar problems or experienced poor battery performance, it’s the seat tube type.

[IREvans]

I had a Di2 battery which began to exhibit the same phenomenon on an Ultegra equipped road bike. There’s no ‘charge bars’ on a road bike groupset, but you get solid green, flashing green then red LED to indicate battery level.

Even when battery was fully charged, it would drop down to flashing red which indicates around 10% battery life left.

Anyway, swapped it for a new battery under warranty, and all has been fine ever since.

It seems the battery is susceptible to water ingress (mine’s mounted in the seat tube) so I regularly check for moisture after a really wet ride and dry it out.

Has been trouble free for years now.

[leyorkie]

I’ve seen some posts where warranty was refused due to water ingress but I can’t see that unless the bike is upside down.
It’s charged to 5 bars but drops to 4 straight away.
I’ve got 6 months warranty left so I’ll just keep an eye on it see if it gets worse.
Thanks for the comments

[IREvans]

leyorkie said:

I’ve seen some posts where warranty was refused due to water ingress but I can’t see that unless the bike is upside down.
It’s charged to 5 bars but drops to 4 straight away.
I’ve got 6 months warranty left so I’ll just keep an eye on it see if it gets worse.
Thanks for the comments

On my bike, the battery is located inside the seat post. I believe the issue is that water wicks down between the seat post and seat tube, and collects inside the frame. It then evaporates, rises, and condenses against the bottom of the battery pack, corroding the terminals. It certainly looks like that's what happened to mine. I'd argue that the battery must be able to tolerate this condition, as it's impossible to keep a bike completely dry. Agreed that the warranty could be invalidated if the battery is totally immersed in water, but can't imagine that on a road bike...!

[leyorkie]

I’ll have a look at mine see if there’s any corrosion.

[Crippo]

Get it back to the shop. They will be able to run diagnostics on it. Otherwise they can contact Madison to return it under warranty. Either way it will be sorted for you.