Hi all,

I recently had a fault with my 2013 XF 2.2D where the display was showing gearbox and parking brake faults. This was narrowed down to a break in one of the wires in the loom near the centre console. All errors are now gone, and the gear selector works fine consistently.

However, when I got the car back the battery was low. Not to be unexpected as the car had probably been started and stopped many times when it was in the garage being repaired. To cut a long story short though, the battery is losing more than half its charge in a day, even after a full charge.

I've had an ammeter connected for the last hour or so and it is started at around 7 Amps, rapidly dropping to around 3A, and now is alternating between about 1.3 and 1.1 Amps.

This seems too high to me (although possibly not enough to explain all of the drain) - how long does the car take to fully shut down? It's locked and all doors and boot are shut.

I still suspect a faulty battery, but need to confirm the drain current is OK. Hopefully somebody can help - I'm desperate to have my car back to being reliable again.

Cheers all :-)

UPDATE: After over 2 hours it is still showing a drain of 1.3 Amps. Which on an 85Ah battery would equate to about 2 and a half days to flatten it. So I think I need to work out what is causing this. One thing I noticed in the last week or so is that the boot soft close seems to do two lots of 'pulling'. I wonder if there could be a fault with that. Any ideas how I can narrow things down a bit, or any common things to look at/disconnect/etc.?

 

Yes - seems way too high. Anything plugged into lighter sockets, any aftermarket electronics (dashcam, lojack, tracker, chargers etc). Good first place to start...

Have you fully disconnected the battery and charged it all the way up before putting it in? Possible that a module is acting up as voltage is too low and it isn't shutting down properly

Otherwise I think parasitic draw test is usually circuit by circuit to see which one(s) are still drawing current. Once you isolate the circuit it should be easy to track down.

 

I'm a bit of a rookie, but I want to toss out that my understanding is that the key fob proximity might turn on some stuff.

If your baby is in the garage, and the key fob is also in there, I believe it could be keeping some electronics active.

 

Hi. Thanks for the reply - I'll try your idea. I've now disconnected the battery from the car and will leave it on charge until tomorrow. I'll then connect it to the car via the ammeter and lock the car - then see if that drain is still there.

 

Good idea, but mine's not new enough to have keyless entry unfortunately!

 

Don't shut the trunk with the battery disconnected!!

 

Once charged test the battery voltage before you put it back in. Assuming it's an AGM battery it should read around 12.8V fully charged

Once you put it back in see if that resolves the issue. Else pull the fuses one by one and see which one makes the ammeter reading drop off.

 

Cheers. Here's progress so far:

• Fully charged battery off the car
• Left it a few hours to settle
• Checked voltage - 12.9V approx
• Connected battery to car via ammeter
• Quiescent current had dropped to 0.02A in less than 10 minutes !! (remember last time it stayed at 1.7A)
• Left it like that for an hour or so and it stayed at 0.02A
• Reconnected battery to car
• Currently monitoring voltage - it is around 12.8V

Too early to be 100% confident, but I reckon you may have fixed my problem! I think I might take it for a run later, and then keep an eye on the battery voltage over the next few days.

 

I keep an eye on mine using this.....
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Yeah not a bad idea that. I was considering a plug in voltage display for the 12V socket in the centre console.

 

Yes I also use the center console 12V outlet. I have a volt meter and 2 USB ports combined into one unit.
I like it because I regularly check what the resting voltage of my car is prior to starting it.
It's a shame we don't get gauges anymore either.
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Well, it seems I still have a problem - despite the drain appearing to drop to 20mA.

The battery is still draining to about 25% level after less than 2 days - and that's with the car just stood and locked.

I can take it for a run and the battery charges up OK. I don't know if I still have an intermittent drain, or whether the battery is now knackered from being flattened several times. How do AGM batteries stand up to this?

Is it worth me getting the Jaguar software do you think? I could reset the BCM module and maybe check for other fault codes.

I hope I don't need to visit the dealers.

 

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I found the software for $60 so I am getting it. I'd suggest the code reader s/w is worth having regardless of this issue.
I'll do some things and report back to a new thread once I receive it.