Parked my car in the garage yesterday afternoon, got out and shut the door.

I went to move it (2008 xk) this morning and …DEAD… as a door nail. Nothing, nada, rien, niente, nichts!

I love living with this brand of vehicle, it seems that even when FORD got involved they couldn’t excise the old Lucas gremlins. Expect the unexpected and life is good.

Charger on it now…time will tell if it is kaput or not.

wj

 

What is the age of the battery?

 

How old is the battery?
.
.
.

 

battery date 6/21

point I'm trying to make is that all was (seemed) fine and today the battery was dead, not low---3.0 volts!

wj

 

I got a new battery yesterday!!!
After a few of my longer trips, I started getting all they typical dash warnings; DSC Not Available, E-Diff Not Available and so on. Alternator voltage a good 14.3 or thereabouts. I tried a total recharge with my Schumacher charger and it didn't help much. Battery date is 12/2018 so I didn't bother attempting any more fixes.
$199 at Sam's Club and half an hour to change it. Now I have to do "The Drive" to pass emissions by 03 November.
I had forgotten how damn heavy these batteries are.

 

Well, I cooked the battery with a 40 amp charger for 4 hours, then put my smart thingy on it and it is sitting at 13.1 and rising ever so slowly. Will disconnect the ctek tonight and see if there is any life there tomorrow.

So…Sam’s club for 199+Tx?

wj

 

They also have a $20 core charge. Duracell AGM. The non-AGM is $139. Pretty good price; AutoZone is $209 for non, $299 for AGM. Similar battery.

 

My Indy just fitted an AGM with stop/start to my 2014 Dynamic R & charged an extra £25 for Jaguar diagnostic fee to program battery to car & reset all electrics.

WTF is that all about?

 

I propose that your indy charged you a fee to access topix.
And yes, the proper way to swap out a battery on a vehicle with bms, is to reset the bms of all learned data from the previous and now non operational battery.

 

Thus at the rate I go through batteries and what is specified for my car, the standard lead-acid will do. Then there’s $100 left for the next bottle of libations.

 

Waiting for disaster I guess.
The car started fine this morning, voltage was 12.4.
Since winter is coming and I'm a bit paranoid a friend is picking up one of the Sam's Batteries for me this weekend...thank you CeeJay.
wj

 

Just had a similar experience last week only this happened as I was driving on holiday, had the car recovered back home. This is the second time a battery has spontaneously died, both cases involved a lead flooded battery made by Platinum Prestige my Ring smart charger read 2.5V initially wouldn't rise above 8.5V after several hours.
​​
Luckily the battery was in guarantee, I refused a identical replacement so National Tyres gave me a Napa AGM as replacement - result! £262 opposed to £90 for the Platinum with no extra to pay.
As an aside about Lucas allegedly crap design, I worked in QC at Lucas cable manufacturing making nuclear subs, fighter aircraft wiring none as far as I know crashing or sinking due to substandard quality. Also the alternator, started motor, instruments, O2 sensors are Nippon denso and the oem battery made by Varta on the XK models.

 

I was trying to add some levity to my misfortune when I mentioned Lucas. However, back in the 60s-70s it was (in The USA) common to have alternators/generators and light assemblies with Lucas branding go up in smoke. I still have, somewhere, a relay manufactured by Lucas for Jaguar that I swear looks like they hired a family member to do some soldering after hours to pick up a few extra pounds.

I bet that there were several levels of expertise and approved quality standards within LUCAS. Subs and planes getting the best.

I still believe that if Jaguar had gold plated all of those wire contacts/plugs we would not be seeing nearly as many ‘faults’. Resistance just keeps building and thresholds bumping against one another.



wj

 

YAY!!!! I should have left well-enough-alone.

My NEW battery is completely and totally deader 'n ****. Absolutely nothing comes on. It was even on a CTEK for these last two days and now NOTHING.
I hooked up my big charger, it shows 3.42 volts and then starts dropping slowly.
And of COURSE the roof is down, further complicating things. Even setting the charger at 200Amp Start to get the roof to raise but the boot lights barely show up and nothing else happens. I guess a manual roof raise is next.

SHITBALLZ!!!!!!!!!!
I guess it's always something, huh?

 

of course, it is a Jaguar!
My new battery install went differently...now all of my tires are low on pressure ( according to the tpms) , my door locks have a little more clunk to them when driving off. My start up voltage is now 12.5 instead of 12.3 my old weak battery displayed and I can feel the starter spinning the motor just a tad quicker.
Life is good as long as it goes on.
wj

 

Well that sucks. Was this the first AGM you’ve tried? Even though almost all are made by a single manufacturer, maybe Walmart/Sams doesn’t get the best quality ones off the line?

 

That sucks! Take your multimeter in next time and get the one with the highest voltage Always a good idea to put it on charge overnight before fitting too, to make sure it goes in chock-a-block full.

You could hook another battery up as if you were going to jump-start it, just to get the roof up... if the donor car is running it might be enough. Of course there's precautions to be taken when jumping a sensitive vehicle so don't do it if you're not comfortable with it.

 

The battery I chose to replace was an EverStart AGM I bought over five years ago, I never had a problem with it. I did decide to get the plain lead one though after returning the Duracell AGM to Sam's, saved $60 this time. It's now in and working fine. SO FAR................... I'm going to keep it off the CTEK for some amount of days, see what happens.

 

I tried that also, using a different good battery to jump the roof. No good. I think the 'new' battery decided to suck all the juice for itself. I certainly would NOT connect a running car's battery to it at that point. Doing the roof manually isn't a huge deal, just more stuff to do. It all went fine. I DID discover that I lost my front roof latch crank cover though. Don't know when or where.

I ALWAYS charge new batteries before the install, this time also. The dead one and this newest L-A one. Still a Sam's Duracell, but the cheaper non-AGM this time.

 

Update time.
Since installing my new battery (and doing nothing else) I have had my nav screen go blank with zero input available until sometime later on. Maybe 5 seconds maybe 5 minutes. My TPMS system varies from selecting each tire is low to not showing any 'low' pressure for several tanks full of driving. Now I am getting the entire TPMS system has a failure. I hooked up my scanner and it read each tire pressure, the voltage to each and showed no faults within that category.
The morning start up voltage typically reads 12.5v, running voltage 13.9~14.0. If I have the ctek on it the startup voltage voltage is 12.5~12.6 but the above hiccups still occur. Colder temperatures or warmer I see no correlation.
What thoughts oh ye, Jaguar aficionados?

wj