I got a call from SWMBO last night sounding more than a little agitated.

She has been away from home for about three weeks, got back on Tuesday evening, she drove the car on Wednesday and Thursday with no problems.

Anyway she says it is 118 deg and she has no AC hence the agtation, then she mentions that she has several lights showing on the dash, "park brake fault, an orange one and something else, they came on after I jump started it" she said.
Apparently she had driven down to her nieces and it would not start when she wanted to leave so they jumped it and that's when the trouble started.
Anyway, long story short, the battery was the obvious thing for the Christmas tree problem so she went off to get it checked, sure enough it was pronounced dead and they switched it out, all the lights went out except for the park brake fault.
I got her to cycle it on and off and that cleared too, the thing that surprised me was that the AC was back to normal also.
I've never heard anyone say that their AC shut down with a failing battery or have I just not being paying enough attention?

 

UM, Norri not paying attention, haha.

I reckon you been busy, good excuse, stick to it.

There have been numerous threads for all sorts of weird stuff lately, and I reckon 80% have been solved with a new battery??.

It is a timely reminder that these cars are ALL juice hungry, and the alternators simply will not mask battery issues anymore as it once did.

I have been in the habit of plugging in the battery charger once a month, for an overnight top up, on all the Jags for a very long time now. It has been a long time since I needed to buy a battery for one of the Jags, but after typing this it will happen, trust me.

 

I think he says he knows that but was asking solely about the A/C not running in that situation.

It's not a detail I'd picked up but I suppose once the car is confused by bad voltages then almost anything odd may happen.

 

Yes it was only the AC thing that surprised me.
SWMBO may have been more focused than most on the air with the 118 deg temps even though the dash was all lit up which is probably the important thing for most folks.

 

By sheer coinky-dink, I had my very first occurrence of the 'park brake fault', 'dsc fault' and 'reduced performance' message and light show the other night too. Guess my battery is on it's way out too.

Possibly on your car the voltage momentarily dropped far enough that the AC panel thought it was told to go sleepies as opposed to an actual fault with the system.

 

Well got another panic call today from the memsahib, she went to the gym with no problems comes out and there's the Christmas tree,DSC, park brake etc, and when she tried to start it the alarm goes off. I'm in SC so no big help except to advise that the battery was the chief suspect, she called the assistance service from the insurance who jumped it and got her going, I think a good charge may have solved the problem as she only uses the car for short runs to work and back, gym and back etc but if she went home and I talked her through putting the charger on then the battery turns out to be dud I'd be deep in the bad books, so a new battery it was followed by park brake reset and she's golden.

 

And here we are more than tree and a half years later and my battery is still behaving itself. The glitch seems to have been a one off.

Ah- I think I just jinxed myself.

 

Norri,

As you know, a 20-mile highway run or two per week would do wonders towards keeping that battery charged as well as the fluids properly circulating. Frequent short trips are killers. Maybe you can talk her into some spirited driving while you're away....

 

I should have taken Grant's advice, (I'll bet I'm not the first to say that) I just left home on the 4th if I'd given the battery a charge before then I'll bet there wouldn't have been a problem.
You're on borrowed time Mikey!

 

The occasional S-Type battery has gone 11+ years.

(Unlike all the others!)

 

I strongly believe that a full charge of 72 hours every six months
is the best insurance. It compensates for all those deficit situations
where the short drive does not fully replace the charge used to start
the vehicle.

 

No doubt. Inexplicably, I almost always get extraordinary life from bog standard lead acid batteries. The one in my S-type is now 12 years old and the former battery in my Corvette was 14 when it started pining for the fjords.

The battery in my bigger boat is dated 2007, works fine. Must be the cold winters.

 

On the British forum This has been posted which explains the problem with new batteries.


"So people have been replacing probably good batteries because they weren't being fully charged

In fact we've not been able to find any battery which is confirmed to not have calcium in it.

They and AGM batteries too, need 14.4 volts to fully charge.

OK... to test them for full charge, you can find what's called a "State of Charge" chart in many places on the web.

For a non-calcium (lead/antimony plates) battery, when it's fully charged it will show 12.65 volts after the "Surface Charge" is removed, or after resting for at least "several hours" - I take that to mean at least 6-8 hours, e.g. overnight. Measure before starting the engine, and directly on the battery terminals.

Calcium and AGM batteries will show 12.7+ volts when they are fully charged.

At the 13.6 volts which the 2002.5+ 2.5-litre and 3.0-litre S Types provide, they will only charge to 75-80%, 12.4 volts. " copied from Jim _S-V6_2004 ahttp://www.jaguarforum.com
__________________

 

I'm not convinced it's even mostly correct.

 

In my case I changed a probably good battery because I was 2 thousand miles away and the memsahib was about to blow a fuse, a cheap fix I'd say.

 

Sounds like it.

 

Is there a recommended battery charger device? Im afraid of the electric gremlins too happen to me as my wife would say "I told you so" towards the Jag had my battery replaced when I bought the car (year ago) and im ready to charge her up as id like to do the recommended charge up every 6months or so. lmk guys links are appreciated.

Thank you.

 

Don't do it every 6 months - if it's low it's FAR too late at that stage.

Why would it be low? Don't you drive often enough?

 

Thanks for the suggestion JagV8. I do drive this quite often as its my daily. So with me driving daily on it, im not to worry about the battery draining on its own and receiving electrical gremlins? Truthfully I'll probably end up buying the CTEK battery charger just for future reference, plus its almost time for Winter even though it doesn't reach below 68degrees in Arizona lol

 

Better, check for the car properly shutting down. Search on here for
quiescent current
as there are target figures, times, troubleshooting etc guides.