Battery flat when wet

[Martin|G|Allen]

Last month:

• Battery flat when I finished work
• Got a jump start from friendly colleague
• drove home (28 miles)
• Car drove fine
• Car started next morning no problem - battery holding charge
• I suspected the problem to be a faulty PDA charger plugged into the cigarette lighter (no lights were on, or other driver aids)

Yesterday

• Battery flat again when I finished work
• Got another jump start
• drove home
• Car drove fine
• Car started today no problem
• I now suspect something else, perhaps the battery, alternator (no lights were on, only thing that came on after jump start was the windscreen wipers, which I left on the slowest setting)

What do you guys think?

Martin

[ItsOnlyMe_vRS]

this happend to me. had just enough power in the battery to star it once.

I took it to th local dealer for them to check, where they replaced it under warrenty.

[mbames]

Being that I qualify as friendly colleague, I'll chuck in my comments to help get the ball rolling. This only seems to happen when wet, and therefore I am thinking that it could some form of short somewhere. However as I don't own a fabia I am not aware if they have any particular water ingress issues that could cause such a problem.

Personally I doubt the battery is at fault, as the occurances between faults must have been at least a month, and the car has started perfectly in the meantime with no obvious signs of battery failure....

[PJW -VRS]

Just driving 28 miles is not enough to recharge a flat battery...........
you either need to charge it on a battery charger or go for much longer
drive ........ I read many moons ago that it takes about 20 miles just to
put back 1 start up .......... so when you take other things using the battery like radio / wipers / heater etc

[MikeW]

Originally Posted by Martin|G|Allen

Last month:

• Battery flat when I finished work
• Got a jump start from friendly colleague
• drove home (28 miles)
• Car drove fine
• Car started next morning no problem - battery holding charge
• I suspected the problem to be a faulty PDA charger plugged into the cigarette lighter (no lights were on, or other driver aids)

Yesterday

• Battery flat again when I finished work
• Got another jump start
• drove home
• Car drove fine
• Car started today no problem
• I now suspect something else, perhaps the battery, alternator (no lights were on, only thing that came on after jump start was the windscreen wipers, which I left on the slowest setting)

What do you guys think?

Martin

You're not the new Leicester City Manager are you? If you are SORT IT OUT NOW!

If not, i apologise.

[Martin|G|Allen]

Charging the lead-acid battery

This seems to be a nice description of the stages of battery charges and seems to indicate that 3 hours of charge would get it to 70%

Martin

[Martin|G|Allen]

I'm not *the* Martin Allen, however I did have a sticker of the man himself on my pencil case when I was at School (when he was playing for West Ham).....

Sad I know :-)

Martin

[MikeW]

Originally Posted by Martin|G|Allen

I'm not *the* Martin Allen, however I did have a sticker of the man himself on my pencil case when I was at School (when he was playing for West Ham).....

Sad I know :-)

Martin

Oh well, never mind! just thought for one glorious moment i could put my suggestions for improving the World's greatest team to the man himself....