Battery Woes possibly!!!!!!

S A Watt · 22 Jun 2019

Just had a great day out on the bike up in the highlands and thought when I got back I would get a few jobs done and service the bike.
Had to take Porsche out of garage which I keep on the ctek charger and noticed an error code on the charger.

Anyway car started fine and I got it out did the bike and then put car back in.
Hooked it up to the ctec again and is sitting on the desulphate mode this Is1 on charger which goes up to 8.

The car has just been in 2 weeks ago to extend the warranty although the 3 year warranty does not expire till end of month. Took it back in last Saturday to opc to have new wheel centres under warranty. They said needed car in as had to hook to computer

After that I just took it home and put it on charger and did not look again till today.

Don't suppose they could have done anything.

I thought I would check the charger as I have 3 of the ctek as used for bikes too. Hooked up another and same result.

It's connected to the battery so checked connections and all look good. Thought I would hook it up with the clips instead just in case but no difference.

Am I looking a broken battery. Car is 3 years old at end of month?

Bit hacked about it's just extended the warranty for 2 years and paid that last week.

I don't suppose that you get a battery on the standard 3 year warranty. I know you don't on the extended one.

If not then I know I have no option but to fit a Porsche one because of the warranty.is a pain as I fitted a bosch one to my old cayman but that did not have the extended warranty. Cost about £100 I suspect Porsche will be 3 times this.
Anyone know the price of battery for the 981 Cayman gts and best place to buy one.

I presume I can fit it myself though. I did with the last one. Or am I going to get error codes.

I have left it on charge to see if it gets past the first setting.will check tomorrow.

Any advice appreciated.

kurlykris · 22 Jun 2019

If you disconnect the battery you will get a bucketfull of error codes, PSM, PASM, Steering angle sensors, ABS, ect, etc. These will clear after a short drive in the car and it recalibrates all of the sensors. If you are unlucky, you may lose some options on the car and it will require a PIWIS handover reset, but again, you would need to be unlucky for this to happen.

Porsche(MOLL) batteries are crap and you have probably done well to get 3 years out of one, obviously your Porsche warranty requires a Moll battery to be fitted to the car, anything else will void your warranty.

Do you have a Digital Multimeter at your disposal to check the battery voltage ?

I would do a load test on the battery if so, measure the voltage 8-12 hours after coming off charge ( this time allows the surface charge to dissipate, which gives false readings as to the state of the battery ) which should be 12.45-12.65 Vdc (75-100% charged). At full charge, pull the fuse for the fuel pump, crank the car on the key for 15 seconds while watching the Digital Multimeter, if it drops below 10Vdc during cranking, then does not recover to your previous measurement within a couple of minutes, then the battery is weak.
Alternatively, leave the car with the engine off with as many electrical systems such as lights, heater blower, heated seats etc turned on for 15 minutes or so and then monitor the battery voltage and it`s recovery period back to maximum voltage, it should recover back to 12.6Vdc within minutes if the battery is good.

If after either of these tests the battery will not stay above 12Vdc without a maintainer or anything attached, then you have a dead cell in the battery, a dead cell will lose 1.5Vdc form your battery voltage reading as a 12Vdc battery is usually 8x1.5V cells these days.

This is quite a difficult thing for a normal car owner to test if they aren`t really proficient in electrics to be honest, so maybe take the car to your local car spares supplier and ask them to test it for you, they should have battery load tester that they can use on your car and give you an instant diagnosis.

Hope this helps :thumb:

T8 · 22 Jun 2019

kurlykris said:
Porsche(MOLL) batteries are crap and you have probably done well to get 3 years out of one, obviously your Porsche warranty requires a Moll battery to be fitted to the car, anything else will void your warranty.

I've done very well to get 4 years 4 months out of mine then and it's still working fine.

NB: Having a non-Porsche battery won't void a Porsche warranty but would void a claim if the failure was in any way attributed to a non-Porsche battery being fitted. It would however mean the car would be refused a warranty come renewal time.

kurlykris · 22 Jun 2019

T8 said:
It would however mean the car would be refused a warranty come renewal time.

That is what I meant T8 :thumb:

For some reason these P cars eat batteries if they are not used regularly, I have never had this on any other car that I have ever owned, not just Moll, but any other make of battery, I can`t quite understand why though ( as an electrical engineer ) :dont know:

S A Watt · 23 Jun 2019

Thanks for all that info. It's funny but Porsche tested the battery 2 weeks ago for the extended warranty and i have a sheet to say it's good it reads voltage 13.01v and 1107 A (En). Not sure what that all means.
could they have do something to the computer that is stopping it getting the charge by accident or could the battery check pushed it over the edge?
Keep it on the ctek all the time to help this.
I'm going to take it out for a good run today and see what happens.

Magic919 · 23 Jun 2019

I presume it's an AGM battery on the 981. Make sure the CTEK knows this and don't connect the charger to the battery terminals.

Battery Woes possibly!!!!!!

S A Watt

Monza

kurlykris

Singapore

T8

Super Moderator

kurlykris

Singapore

S A Watt

Monza

Magic919

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