GTO Dash Dead - Any help please.

The symptoms suggest it's low on juice so it may well be the charger has been doing it's best to charge a weak battery. Particularly through a winter spell.

When was the battery last replaced? If more than 2-3 years I'd put a fresh battery in, too much electronics relying on a clean strong power source.

See how you go from there, but don't worry too much at this stage. I've seen plenty of strange gremlins with weak batteries.

 

In which case definitely try the master cut off for a while and back on. Normal pre-cautions, windows slightly down etc. Tell the alarm tracker company that it is going to be disconnected. However, it should of recharged during the original run out.

Perhaps an after-market tracker is taking a bit more power reducing the lay-up period. Ferrari recommend anything longer than a week to keep the battery conditioner but always found their recommendations conservative.

 

Good advice, fully agree! My GTO is extremely grumpy if it's not 100% juiced. I've left the charger to do its job and once the fully charged light is on, all is generally fine. Reboot as Chiefly suggests normally works, assuming charger has had 24 hours to cook.

 

Do you recall if the battery tender switched to maintenance mode when you tried to rescue the battery? Maintenance mode is indicated by the GREEN light. If your battery was so depleted that it would not start the car, it would likely take the regular Ferrari-label CTEK tender, similar to the CTEK Multi US 3300 model, much more than a day to recharge.

Assuming you have the Ferrari CTEK US 3300 equivalent tender, it is not actually a multi-mode charger but will have the same basic charging capacity as the Multi US 3300. However in this case, unless your garage is very cold, it should not matter. According to the GTO owner's manual, it has a "Fiamm 12V, 74 AH, 440 A" battery. While this is within the service envelope of the 3300, its user manual does state "The MULTI US 3300 cannot be used to restore a fully worn out battery.".

If you have already done the battery disconnect make sure you follow the startup procedure (see owners manual) when you reconnect the battery. There's a bit more to it than caution with the windows.

You should ALWAYS keep the car connected to the battery tender on AC. If you don't you will just flirt with lady luck. It all depends on how well-charged your battery was before you stopped using the tender. If it was marginal, the battery will likely die if you keep it off the tender for a significant period. Several weeks of absence is way too long and as I indicated, your battery tender cannot recharge a dead battery. It wasn't designed to do that. It's a battery tender. It cannot supply a bulk charge.

Some CTEK battery tenders can indeed supply a bulk charge and recharge a dead battery but I have not seen any Ferrari-labeled chargers that match those units. The Ferrari battery tenders are tenders only, designed only to keep a battery topped-up. Starter batteries do not like being discharged, they should be always keep at 100% charge if possible to extend their service life. The electrical draw on a house AC outlet is miniscule when the tender is connected.

I think your best bet is to make sure you follow the owner's manual regarding the battery reconnect procedure. If the instrument panel remains dead you need to either get your car's battery to a battery shop or to your dealer to have it checked, or replace it with a proper fully-charged unit. Sometimes a battery can be recharged from a fully-discharged state if it has not been damaged by the event - the battery shop has the diagnostics and special charger that can diagnose and fully recharge your battery in under 1 hour.

 

My battery died after 7 months from new so it is well possible. Tried to recharge it with a Ctek MXS 10.0 but it only accumulated enough power to start the car once ... got a replacement battery and now plug the Ctek every week to keep it close to full charge at all time. I also bought a charge indicator (also from Ctek, get the one that plugs directly onto the battery, the one that goes into the cigarette lighter does not work on my 599, works on my jeep though!). It has red/amber/green leds and lets you know when you need to plug the charger (usually within a week or so). However, I never experienced any serious dash issues as a result of a week battery apart from the occasional freeze or boot that would only open manually but I blamed it on the electronics rather than the battery ...