Warning Lights - Please Help.....
Discussion
Recently when having driven/stopped/turned off engine and then return sometime later I am getting my battery & MIL light coming on...car will start for 1-2 secounds then cuts out. I have to then leave car for 30 minutes or so and try again....sometimes it starts sometimes it doesn't.........curiously sometimes my oil light comes on as well as the battery/MIL light.....I've checked the fuses and all seem fine as is oil and battery.....any thoughts please would be much appreciated :-)
Thanks from Gavola.
Thanks from Gavola.
Nope - a battery can be almost trashed and still show 13v and have a battery charger fitted to it.
The key is the capacity of the battery not it's charge. For example, consider a 12v square battery used to power a big torch. It'll show 12v and if it were rechargeable it'd have the same behaviour. However you'd never be able to start a car with it as the drain of the starter system would drop the voltage too low to work.
Something similar can happen with old or previously flattened batteries. Crystals form on the plates and reduce it's amp capacity. Everything looks fine but when you try to start it hasn't got enough power to crank the engine. The only way to test it is to hook up an amp meter inline and crank the engine to see what it drops too.
On my old S2's I found that if the battery drops too low the alternator would cause the engine to stall.
If the battery is over 2 years old then no harm in changing it and you can get a one from halfords for 40 quid that has a larger amp capacity (so longer standby time) than the standard one.
The key is the capacity of the battery not it's charge. For example, consider a 12v square battery used to power a big torch. It'll show 12v and if it were rechargeable it'd have the same behaviour. However you'd never be able to start a car with it as the drain of the starter system would drop the voltage too low to work.
Something similar can happen with old or previously flattened batteries. Crystals form on the plates and reduce it's amp capacity. Everything looks fine but when you try to start it hasn't got enough power to crank the engine. The only way to test it is to hook up an amp meter inline and crank the engine to see what it drops too.
On my old S2's I found that if the battery drops too low the alternator would cause the engine to stall.
If the battery is over 2 years old then no harm in changing it and you can get a one from halfords for 40 quid that has a larger amp capacity (so longer standby time) than the standard one.
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