Starter Battery Advice

Greenmachine

Senior Member
T6 Guru
I'm after a little bit of advice/guidance if you don't mind?

I "think" my starter battery is on the way out, as it appears to be getting worse at holding charge.

It's on a 150 DSG T6.1, on a '23 plate, but the van itself wasn't ordered by me, and I think was probably sat in the convertors for a while. I got it in May 2023, but have no idea of build date.

I have noticed that stop/start has never been as active as on my Skoda, and has not been activating much in the last few weeks. I had it on a run for about 90 minutes on Sunday, and it didn't activate at all.

Generally, if the van's not going to be used, I put it on a Noco Genius 5 every 2 weeks to keep it topped up.

Last Friday, I was doing a few bits with it, opening and closing doors, running the windows up and down as they had been a bit sticky recently, and I got a low battery warning from Meta Trak. Put the charger on for the rest of the day, and as I'd used the van the previous weekend, I took it off charge, left it for about an hour and checked the voltage with a multi meter, 12.7v, all seemed fine.
I checked again on Saturday morning, it was down to 12.4v. I checked again on Sunday, down to 12.0v. Ran it as above, and after parking up and a chance to settle it was showing 12.3v. It's got a factory scr, and the leisure battery seems to sit at about 12.7v for ages.

I've been monitoring every 24 hrs this week, and its been showing:
Mon 12.2v
Tues 12.1v
Today. 12.0v

The fitted battery is a dreaded Moll.

I did change the reverse bulbs for the Twenty20 led's a couple of weeks ago. No other electrical work has been done.

We are supposed to be away in it in a couple of weeks, so do you think I should:

1. Just charge it tomorrow and hope for the best?
2. Get VW Assist out and hope they find it faulty and change it?
3. Accept that at some point it will fail to start and buy a jump start pack?
4. Just buy a replacement and find someone to code it?
 
It depends what else is connected to the battery and drawing power when the van is shut down. It sounds like you have a tracker, which will draw current. Anything else ?

Pete
 
No, no dashcams, no usb leads plugged in or anything else connected.
The tracker has been there since last May with no issues. I’ve only noted this in the last month or so, previous to that, I had no cause to believe there may be a problem.
 
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