my car is completely dead

My 2004 360 Spider can go 3 weeks before the battery needs a charge, it was more like 2 weeks before I replaced the battery last year. It is my belief that these cars need a trikle charger if driven less than once per week.

 

I had the battery go dead on my 360 because I left something on. I put it on a slow 2 amp charger for a day and then put it on a trickle charger and all was good, no problems.
Personally I would not try to jump start a Ferrari as bad things can happen with all the ECU's on the car. There are alot of horror stories out there about people jump starting Ferraris.

 

A slow charger is going to take forever to bring the battery up to snuff. Even if you're able to slow-charge the battery to the point of getting the engine running, the alternator will kick in working overtime and you'll risk burning up the alternator. Your best bet is to remove the battery and take it to a local auto service center. Then have them charge the battery back up to 100% using their professional quick charger. It'll probably takes about an hour. Mount the battery back to the car and you should be good to go.

If you're in a hurry, put in a new battery and be done with it.

 

Save yourself the trouble of removing the battery, remove the cover behind the left hand seat ( assuming same side as uk car) and this gives you access to the main power cables. Connect say a 4 amp battery charger to the red cable and 1 of the earth bolts. Give it a day and you should be fine as its only a 2 year old battery ?
If the battery is fully flat the ferrari charger will not work, i think it needs to sense voltage to switch on but if you dont have any charge left then it just sits there doing nothing.

If you find that the charger goes full scale and then back to zero- this happens very quickly, then you need to disconnect the quick release negative from the battery and connect the charger directly to the battery terminals

 

1. New Battery. If the old dies completely it's toast.
2. Check the alternator output (could be dead) - with car running shoudl be 14 volts at battery terminals.
3. Get rid of any extra stereo crap or tracking hardware that is draining the battery

 

Its been sitting with no charger for 2 weeks and gone flat, normal for a 430 so i dont see how you can say it is toast ?? No problem to charge it up with a standard 4 amp charger.

 

id personally try a charger first. If you don't have one, theyre a pretty handy thing to have.
Another option is some auto parts stores will charge and load test a battery, check for bad cells, for free if you bring it in to them.
Now, if youre somewhere remote, I might not make sense to go back and forth, you might be better off just buying one, and charging your old one and keeping it as a spare.

 

I take my F430 out every other weekend. One early Saturday morning the engine would not turn over, the hood would pop open and the car wouldn't start. I immediately, like get out of the car go to ebay and order a trickle charger. Now the car is on a trickle charger all the time and I have no worries.

 

Strongly advise against jump starting as the electronic are very sensitive to voltage spikes and may cause expensive problems.
Agree with disconnecting and or removing the battery to charge and then check it. Sometimes a 2 year old battery can go bad with a dead cell etc. Suggest regular use of a maintainer for when the car sits for a longer time interval.

 

My wife's Q7 is daily driven and a couple of weeks ago I jumped in to do an errand.
Pushed starter button and it was dead. I used to work as a auto mechanic but for a moment I was perplexed, the car was used only the previous night, it couldn't be the battery?
Long story short it was the battery, I had just never personally seen one die like that.
Modern batteries are crap and generally only carry a 1 year warranty. That do fail unexpectedly.
Get a good one and keep it on a tender when you're not using your car.

 

Some thoughts on 360/430 batteries.

1) These cars drain batteries when they sit. Even a brand new battery will be stone dead after 3-4 weeks of sitting. It is imperative to keep the car on a good trickle charger such as a Ctek 3300 whenever you park it for much more than 48 hours. Your alternator, starter, and flywheel ring gear will thank you.

2) Never, ever jump start the car. Ever! This forum is full of stories of owners who have had to replace delicate electro-luminescent instrument lighting. Failure to heed this will make your dealer and Francochamps of America happy, or at least a little richer.

3) If your battery is dead and you need to use a charger make sure you isolate it from the rest of the car by using the shut off switch in the boot.

YMMV.

 

Once the battery is up, away you go. You will have to reset the clock and put the radio code in. Code is on the card with the manual.
The Ferrari charger with the car is a trickle type but there is no problem using a higher output charger on- remember that the alternator charges it at a lot higher rate when you have the engine running.
You can connect a permanent charging cable behind the left hand seat to the big red power line and an earth bolt, it is usefull as you can connect the charger without having to access the battery.
A handy indication to the battery condition is to put the headlights on and press the starter, if the lights dont go out the battery is fine. The battery has 2 loads on it at the same time and both work so it is ok.

 

I respectfully disagree. Just follow the manual. Also the 'jump' connection point is important (not at the battery but behind the driver's seat). This is a connection point leading directly to the starter.

My car was jumped started correctly when I bought it after it's winter sleep, it was later jump started after the initial (to me) maintenance was done. After several days of reading in Fchat I followed some sound advice and installed a new battery. I am in my second year of ownership I will install a new battery next year regardless of the current battery condition (cheap electrical insurance in my opinion).

 

I agree with Hessank on this. I replace my battery every 3 years regardless

 

+3. Same here. Every 36 months +/-

You guys never fail to amaze me. A battery is an electrochemical component. When it is drained down to 0 volts the reaction will never run the same.

When a battery gets low, the alternator works extra hard to charge it by outputting extra amps to charge it. With this extra current the cable to the battery at the alternator heats up and you can get degredation, esp. at the connections. With a fresh battery, the alternator doesn't have to work as hard. With the 430 and it's known drain.. that's why Ferrari included a battery maintainer. I always love it: can afford a Ferrari but won't spend the money for a $150 battery.

Re jumping: you can use a battery of similar output to jump it per the manual. Haven't tried it and don't want to...

 

Would it be true to say that the later models likely have a bigger/more consistent drain than the older ones? I say this because trackers were fitted as standard after 2007 MY if I'm correct, and what else I don't know. At the same time the internal battery charge point and charger was added so I guess Ferrari knew something there.....

Either way, mine stays on my CTEK 24/7 and I replace either every 4 years or if I have any sort of issue starting

 

The dealers jump them but they put the headlights on first to iron out any chance of a surge.

 

I wouldn't personally jump it. Your safest bet is to try to recharge it with a trickle charger and see what happens. Good luck.

 

It depends on the charger out put. The 430 battery is about 75 amp hour capacity so a 5 amp charger would take 15 hours. A 3 amp charger would be 25 hours etc

 

If its flat then stick a decent charger on it, say 4 to 6 amps. It will also help clear off any sulfating of the plates which build up after time.
Someone on here posted a good idea of putting an electronic charger with 4 amps, linked to a timer so it gets a higher charge every other day- he said it was better than the ferrari maintainer.

 

a trickle charger is better for maintaining reasonably charged batteries, than for reviving discharged ones. it could take days if at all.
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