Batteries

Batteries

Author
Discussion

bertie

Original Poster:

8,566 posts

291 months

Friday 28th February 2003
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Right then, as some folks will know from other threads I have long held a belief that the Tuscan has excessive quescant current being taken from the battery so last night I did a little investigation.

Mine is just over a year old and appears to be knackered.

So removed the whhel and access panel to get at the battery and tested it.
At standby the drain is about 500 mA for a couple of minutes, then once the alarm has gone into sleep mode it settles to around 50 mA.

That is massive. Where I work we design original equipment electronics for many car makers and anything with a permenant battery feed has to take under 1 mA so that is a huge drain and it's no wonder you can't leave the car for too long before it flattens tha battery.

But there are bigger priblems than that, less than two inches away from the battery just behind some heat shielding fabric are.....the two catalytic converters! Now these get incredibly hot and batteries don't like hot at all. They're being cooked and I'm suprised they last as long as they do.

I don't know if the Tamora and T350 are the same, I suspect so, but if they are they'll suffer too.

Not a clever peice of design and I'd reccomend checking the battery fluid levels as mine were well down, boiled out no doubt.

21TVR

655 posts

263 months

Friday 28th February 2003
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uuuummm! interesting...would a Defence attorney like to put up a counter argument!

bertie

Original Poster:

8,566 posts

291 months

Tuesday 11th March 2003
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On a positive note, since topping up the water in the battery mine seems to have recovered rather well.
It's made a huge differance.

Might be a temporary fix but it's OK so far!

bertie

Original Poster:

8,566 posts

291 months

Monday 28th April 2003
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Just a quick update, battery eventualy gave up so I replaced it a couple of weeks ago.

Car works fine, drove home on Friday and parked it in the garage. Got up this morinig and it wont start!!

Even better than that, the window failed to go down properly when the door was opened and so it's bitten a chunk out of the A pillar! Nice.

I'm now so fed up with the thing I can't wait for it to go and get a proper car, due in six weeks or so.

And before ayone tells me I'm obviously not the right kind of person for a TVR, it's my sixth, and I know them very well.
But just how annoying is it whey your car won't start.

qualityscrew

503 posts

270 months

Monday 28th April 2003
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Just thinking to myself......

Are you just UNLUCKY or was I just LUCKY

Had my last Tuscan for just under 2 years and covered 24,000 miles. The battery never gave me a problem and when I recently part-exchanged the car it still had the original fitted. Although I used the car daily for work, I did, on occaisions leave it for a couple of weeks whilst on holiday and it never failed to start - and it lived it's life with me OUTSIDE in all weathers!

Ianf

108 posts

290 months

Tuesday 29th April 2003
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I have had two new battereies fitted to mine over 2 years.

My car has covered 36,000 miles and up until recently was my sole car. Since becoming a fair weather driver I too have had the battery discharge! Lucky that my main car is a Mitsy Pickup so I am now able to tow the Tuscan!