FIAMM Battery - Potentially on Death Bed

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calnorth
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Post by calnorth »

Car just past 2nd Service at just over 2 yrs old:
Attempted a pop to the shops..press Start and clickety, clickety click and on and on. I hadn't driven the thing for 5 days and temperatures have not been below 0 deg C. Iv'e been watching the Battery for the last year closely...So?

Jump start attempt with standby charged battery...clickety, clickety click and on and on. Standby Battery was ok at 12.3v so suspect jump cables or something else?

Next step now is a 1 hour charge and is not looking too good. Old Fiamm is pulling about 3.8 Amps. If that were a degraded battery as it demonstrated (10v across terminals) I would expect 7 to 8 Amps straight off the bat. That gets the 10 hour charge rate right 80Ah = 8A for 10hrs. Charging at 3.5 A will take too long and not fully charge?

See what happens in 1 hour. Rain...for sure!

Just rung the Nissan Road Assistance to test the phone number...left them a bit shakey when I told them this is a test call. :lol:
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DaveBerlin
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Post by DaveBerlin »

Colin, you are the Electrical Brains get down to Nissan again and get a New Varta Battery. I queried our Battery in Dec in our new QQ and it was confirmed that it was a Varta. What I cannot believe is that once warm on the Dash indicator the “Stop Start” functions all of the time, so much so that generally from directions from the “Better Half” I turn it OFF before I start cursing, but it is doing what it is supposed. I suppose if it didn’t work there would still be a complaint - some you win some you lose Dave 😫

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calnorth
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Post by calnorth »

Dave....I can't Start so won't be going anywhere. They can come to me.

I connected my charger at 2 pm yesterday. It began very slowly charging which in my experience was wrong. I had selected Full Charge not Trickle. Anyway, the current draw was about 50% of expected. Checked it per 15 minutes and at about 45 minutes in, the current draw was dropping through about 2 to 1.5 Amps. So within approx 45 minutes this battery had almost fully charged from degraded...appeared to?

Its impossible to charge a battery that won't...ummm, charge correctly..... :roll: :roll:
Also, the rain dropped by the bucket load. I've left it overnight and will check it this morning and likely get the RAC out shortly. I'll get the RAC guy to do load tests on this Fiamm and my Bosch standby battery, observe DTCs and procedure to tell this dumb car what new battery has been installed...if I can?

Update this am:

Voltage on Batt terminals 11.10v which I've seen before and starts ok. Car started as normal? After 45 min charge yesterday Terminal volts were 12.8v. It had lost about 1.7v overnight. Car started charging at 15.4v on Service Status menu and highest I ever saw. Its playing reliability games I'd say.

Nissan Call:
Nissan Emergency Operator attempted to get me to sit in the car and overcome the immobiliser with her over the phone instructions. Some new advisory they had? So I told her the car won't charge properly otherwise the car appears ok...starter relay clattering. She then said she'd send out the RAC within 2 hours as vehicle is at my home. An hour if on the road.... and I don't want to be there!
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calnorth
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Post by calnorth »

The RAC "local man" arrived and flipped his Panasonic analyser out onto Batt Terminals. Run tests for 5 mins and returned "100% good battery for recharge" amongst 20 other test results incl. CCA/Volts and so on. I then under went an extremely well informed talk on the battery management system. In short standard battery chargers are going to behave differently to my dinosaur experiences. I've seen some of this about pulsed charging (PWM) and only part believed it. He pointed out that the Alternator on the QQ's are huge things...I did then notice/wakeup. A standard charger simply cannot do what that monster is capable of under Batt Management.

He tested my standby Bosch S5 Batt...its sitting right in the middle of the Bad/Good meter reading and is of course low on CCA (start amps). Damn!

I heard the war stories of the Start/Stop function. Stopping cars with Batt problems again after he got cars going at first local traffic lights etc. Expect to loose selectable Start/Stop switching soon...expect to loose ICE's of course.

The RAC is fitting AGM Batts instead of EFBs of any flavour. Inadequate EFB power delivery generally. Needless to say I didn't get a Batt change.

RAC recommendation was to moan at the dealer and referencing the RAC visit. I'll give it a couple of days as I see £££'s loss signals on the horizon.

Main Take Away:
A standard battery charger appears to sufficiently recover a downed EFB battery in 45 mins...... :shock: ... If its ok anyway?
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Post by lapalmeraie »

Had the some problems on my QQ last holidays Carl.
After 4 years of use but nevertheless the very first time that I have this kind of issue on a car.
Changed it myself after en jumpstart by Nissan Asstistance against a brand new shiny (and way to expensive) Varta. :mrgreen:

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calnorth
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Post by calnorth »

lapalmeraie wrote: Wed Feb 19, 2020 11:45 am Had the some problems on my QQ last holidays Carl.
After 4 years of use but nevertheless the very first time that I have this kind of issue on a car.
Changed it myself after en jumpstart by Nissan Asstistance against a brand new shiny (and way to expensive) Varta. :mrgreen:
I switch out Stop/Start most every time as I often got stalls in bad places. Its a bag of dangerous crap!

The other issue that arose with the RAC guy was boiling batteries. Never seen it happen in my life but looking at the size of the QQ Alternator...its a worry. That thing could pulse big variable Amps hence the safety device on the + connector (red) end... I suspect. Which highlights the need to configure/register a new Batt to the cars Batt Management system.

I think I've seen these AGM/EFB Batts at about £200+. An example of unnecessary high tech.

Cheers

Colin
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Post by lewisbryant »

In my experience with the FIAMM batteries once its died once it wont last long and die easily compared to a new FIAMM I bet if you put your headlights on for 5 to 10 minutes it would die, a good FIAMM would be able to handle that drain over 5 10 minutes, this is how we check the battery capabilities we do test them with the Midtronic tester before and after the drain test to see the drop, most FIAMMS die within 5 minutes and the result midtronics throw it is replace battery. We do take measurements of the started EN and see how much it drops by aswell as the available voltage after the drain test. Then we determine whether or not its had its day which with a FIAMM is 90 percent of the time. If it's a FIAMM and it's in for a battery complaint then 90 percent of the time its had its day

The VARTA enhanced flooded seems to be a good battery had minimum complaints where I am with them usually if they die it's mainly a problem with the car like on the new j11s with LED headlights the bcm was staying awake therefore draining them. But we can recover the VARTA batteries and there usually fine
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calnorth
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Post by calnorth »

lewisbryant wrote: Sat Feb 22, 2020 8:22 am In my experience with the FIAMM batteries once its died once it wont last long and die easily compared to a new FIAMM I bet if you put your headlights on for 5 to 10 minutes it would die, a good FIAMM would be able to handle that drain over 5 10 minutes, this is how we check the battery capabilities we do test them with the Midtronic tester before and after the drain test to see the drop, most FIAMMS die within 5 minutes and the result midtronics throw it is replace battery. We do take measurements of the started EN and see how much it drops by aswell as the available voltage after the drain test. Then we determine whether or not its had its day which with a FIAMM is 90 percent of the time. If it's a FIAMM and it's in for a battery complaint then 90 percent of the time its had its day

The VARTA enhanced flooded seems to be a good battery had minimum complaints where I am with them usually if they die it's mainly a problem with the car like on the new j11s with LED headlights the bcm was staying awake therefore draining them. But we can recover the VARTA batteries and there usually fine
Thanks for your experience info. This RAC guy did not have a load tester aboard so the Panasonic analyser (tablet thing) was used and threw all good results...100% good. Looked like a display of the new battery specification advertised everywhere? That rather bothered me because he admitted this was not a proper test of the Batt. Nissan won't compensate the RAC on sight of all good results, yet Nissan well know the Fiamm's are crap.

The issue of parasitic drain rises all the time (BCM) but I'm not going to waste time on that. The recommend was to complain to the dealer who would want to check the car. I suspect I'll get stung on NFF ...no fault found.

It appeared to me that it resisted a full charge at expected 7A (3.5A and falling - actual) from my charger yet managed to climb from 10v to 12.8v in 45 minutes and later sunk to 12.10v overnight. And started normally!

Cheers

Colin
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Post by calnorth »

I'll try and keep this topic on the Forum front page...can't be pinned:

Subject...unreliable FIAMM battery of approx 2 years old

Update: 25/02/20 08:00. Conditions = sunny but overnight minor frost. Temp = approx +5C

Check Batt status before starting = 11.65v (seen that approx figure before... often)
Cranked...Starter only just turned but started engine.

Takeaway:
Now I have to pre-crank this starter (test) some 4 hours prior to any planned drive. So that I can get a timely RAC visit.
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Post by calnorth »

Update:

29/02/20 10:00. Mild weather - sunny.

No start...clackity clack of starter relay. Have used it 4 times since last RAC visit 10 days back. Starts weren't exactly confidence making.

Note:
Terminal volts about 11.1v

Am now waiting at home for RAC man to end his towing task somewhere?

RESULT: (Hooray!!)
Test Set showed about 55% capacity and REPLACE indicated. Varta AGM type Batt fitted and configured by the RAC guy. They will not fit EFB.

The RAC are working through EuroCarParts on this stuff I was told.
Last edited by calnorth on Sat Feb 29, 2020 2:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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