355 Battery - pain in the butt

The batt can be charged in situ. Remove the right hand side panel which has the Vin number on it and there will be a charging point. 3 + terminals, one -. I 'll try and find a pic. To replace batt, you will need to remove wheel.

 

Hi, the few times I had had this, I had jump-started the car from the posts in the engine bay, and taken the car on a nice drive to recharge battery. The owners man. shows you where to jump start. I have now bought a trickle charger that simnply plugs into the cigarette lighter socket. (from Porsche)

 

Can't find a pic of the terminal but here's one of the engine bay showing which panel needs removing. 2 allen keys along the side and one 10mm bolt on the top edge
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

I use my old Optimate Battery conditioner from my bike with a cig lighter fitting. Shouldn't cost more that £50-£60 for a new one.

 

Graham I think there are 3 allen key bolts each comprised of a 5mm nut along with a washer.

Jaz.

 

Only 2 on mine. Maybe one fell off?

 

Don't forget to let the engine idle for 10 minutes so it can re-aquire the engine control parameters.

 

just trickle charge it dont boost it

 

I don't know if this is true or not, maybe Jaz can confirm.

I recently had to have mine jump started by the RAC because it had gone flat and I didn't have a spare battery with enough oomph in it to get the thing going.

He advised that when jump starting you shouldn't disconnect the jump leads for around 10 minutes to allow the charge in both batteries to roughly equalise. He reckoned that diconnecting the donor battery straight away could result in the ECU being spiked when it detected the sudden drop in volts and attempted to compensate for this.

Does this sound reasonable?

 

not sure but sounds like RAC man might just be dragging out the job to look at your car

 

agreed, spoke to my electrical magician and he says it makes no difference at all.
just bought an Oxford conditioner, use it for the mini tractor too, works a treat!

 

I've never heard of the procedure either but I wasn't going to argue with him whilst he was sorting my car out.

 

Actually it depends on several factors like temperature, battery condition, whether it's an IC smart-charge alternator etc.

The RAC man is correct in principle, but 4 or 5 minutes should be sufficient at higher ambient temps. 10 mins is extra safe for very low temps. These guys are trained to make sure they don't cause further damage which the RAC might have to pick up the tab for, or leave any doubt that if you fried the ECU before they got there, then you killed the battery trying to restart the car they can't be blamed for your ECU.

It was not so relevant a few years back when cars had ignition points and simple alternator voltage regulators, but in todays computerised world, some of the vehicle electronic systems can be very sensitive to current spikes.

As a tip, if you're in a hurry and need to disconnect the leads then once the car has started turn on the headlamps and heated rear screen, turn off the jump car engine, then disconnect the jump lead. The consumers act as a "sink" to soak-up an potential spike.

Once disconnected you can then turn off the consumers to let the battery charge quicker.

All modern cars (including F-Cars) use smart-charge alternators. The 355 did not have proper smart-charge in today's sense, but the 355 engine management system detects low battery voltage and ups the idle speed a few hundred RPM's to aid charging.

Anyway, avoid the problem, a battery conditioner is the way to go.

 

Well call me a bore then but I enjoyed reading that.
Thanks

 

Me too.

And recently I had cause to get at my battery to tap a 12v feed. Spyder-Man is right, it is a real pain in the butt.

 

As someone who has had 355 battery problems before, this was really helpful.
Thanks (especially RF128706).