Car registered in 2012. New battery fitted in January 2014 under warranty. Purchased C-Tek and charged after every journey. No further problems until today. Off to golf club, car just turned over? Played golf had a coffee, back to car, not a chance of starting it. Got booster battery pack from the hotel, started, and drove home with the usual array of error massages. Checked for obvious signs of battery drain. Battery back on C-Tek and charging? Any suggestions?

 

1st the most important question is "how'd you shoot".
I would get the battery load tested by the dealer who installed it. They should be able to determine what the problem is and can verify if the battery monitor was reset and working correctly. What is the resting voltage without the charger connected. It should be around 12.6V. Also normal running voltage should be around 13.4 V +/-. Let us know what you find.

 

Thanks. Will investigate after the New Year.

 

While does not exactly fit the scenario that I had in my '10 XKR, it is worth checking out. In my case, after leaving and locking the car, the electrical system failed to completely shut down and kept draining the battery. The system shuts down in stages, not all at once. One of the last stages, the infotainment one, failed to shut off twice leaving me with a completely dead battery. The battery was tested good afterwards.

Solution; there was a factory TSB and a software update to fix the issue. As it seems in my case, it worked as I have not had any battery issues for years now.

 

Charged battery, and checked battery for any discharge, voltage holding at 12+ volts and alternator charging at 14 volts. All ok. Will just have to wait and see!! All error messages gone.

 

What is odd and indicative of an issue is that you keep the car on the CTEK when not in use. With that scenario you should never have a flat battery. I would believe you had a fresh CTEK charged battery when you left your house to golf, then 4 or 5 hours later you go to start and it fails to turn? A single trip from your house to the course shouldn't cause you to have a complete drain!

 

The CTEK will not fix a car with an electrical problem, if anything it will just mask it. I said before, if you need a CTEK to keep your battery charged then you have a problem with your car that needs to be fixed. Nobody should need to keep a CTEK on a properly running car that is driven at least once every couple of weeks. Advice: Get the car fixed and you won't need a CTEK.

 

Not in every case. I agree if your trip every couple weeks is sufficient in length to properly re-charge your battery. However some, like me, only have a 8 mile commute to work, this will not properly charge the battery. Now I can also go weeks without hooking up to the charger but it eventually will catch up to me and my back up buzzer starts to pop off for no reason in reverse. This is the first sign my battery is not up to snuff. During long periods of no use I will unhook my tender after a couple weeks and a month later still no issue's.


I only mention this so a new to Jaguar brand individual (like me when I started down the Jaguar path) does not feel every Jaguar with a weak battery has an electrical glitch. This is the distinct impression I got when surfing "Jag Lovers" 12 years ago. This is not the case in MOST scenario's, at least not from the mid '90's on.


Jaguar's need a battery at 101% at all times. If you provide this your Jaguar experience will be greatly enhanced. Go get a tender and use it!

 

My commute to work in my '07 XKR is only 4 miles and is all inner city driving but I have had no issues since switching to an AGM battery just over two years ago.

I do have a CTEK but only use it if I am doing work on the car or have been using my diagnostic gear. The rest of the time it stays in the cupboard.

 

Ok, whip 'em out and see who's the 'shortest'! (Retirees and 'home office' types are ineligible)
My office is 1.5 miles from home 'as the crow flys', a 2 mile commute (if I drive), lasting all of 4 minutes.

I've yet to encounter an electrical glitch with my 07 XK, but I do keep it on a maintainer, as it's so easy (5 seconds to connect or disconnect). It may sit for a few days or a week without it occasionally (with no problems), but I'd rather keep the battery full, as I know my short trips will takes it's toll on it eventually.

 

I agree 100% on some of this, a maintainer will mask an overall problem, in this case I suspect that there is an issue since even with his masking agent he is having problems. That is what I said in my post and I am sticking to it! What the issue is I cannot say, extreme drain because of a software glitch, an alternator or regulator that is failing, or even a fairly new battery that is crapping out. It cracks me up when people give absolute confident answers while internet-diagnosing peoples problems, this could be several items.

I disagree on the other point, in my case the car only is driven around town, maybe 10 miles a day. In that time it will be started probably 8 times putting load on the battery that is never recovered by our driving profile - short, low speed trips. From my experience with this and my previous BMW and that is bourne out by countless others with the same results is that I use more juice than I put into the battery on a daily basis. This leaves me with a net-negative charge over the course of several weeks.

In my previous BMW this resulted in a battery that failed in 2.5 years, twice! So I started maintaining for longevity and health of battery. Same as I do for my Motorcycle and Jetski. By using a maintainer on my Ski my first battery lasted 7 years, almost unheard of for a Jetski, most of the time folks are replacing them every one to two years.

 

There are posts about battery drains (how to find & fix, etc). Generally not a software issue, though can't say never.

 

I suspect that AGM is irrelevant, the fact that you changed your battery is the key point. How old was the one you changed?

 

The main benefit of AGM batteries is that they supposedly recharge up to 5 times faster than batteries with flooded technology which may explain why my car is able to cope with mainly short journeys.

I have no idea how old the battery was on my car. It wasn't the original and I changed it about 18 months after I got the car. I changed the battery on my old X350 for another lead acid battery and was amazed how much quicker the engine turned over with the new battery when starting it. That quickly tailed off though whereas I still get the same performance out of the AGM battery as when I first put it in.

Writeups like this on the web convinced me to pay the bit extra that AGM batteries are and I have no complaints yet:

"Another AGM advantage is that they discharge much more slowly than a flooded battery when the car is not operated for a period of time. Perhaps the greatest advantage of AGM is product life, up to twice as long as a comparable flooded battery! From a performance perspective, the AGM battery boasts better recharge capability while providing up to 3 times more starts per cycle and produces more power per cycle."

 

And ironically they usually have shorter warranty periods from what I've seen.

 

Nothing against AGM batteries, my point was that changing an ailing battery before it starts to cause electrical issues is what is important. Whether you choose AGM or not is a different issue. In any event, I suspect that the recharge time during driving is limited by the capacity of the alternator.

My work pattern has changed and since August my journeys have all been short local ones and the standard battery fitted copes admirably and has not exhibited any issues whatsoever. The only Jag on the CTEK is the XK8 which stands for three to four weeks at a time. The other CTEK keeps the standby batteries fresh.