Dead battery or Not?

1345 Views 4 Replies 5 Participants Last post by jfoj, Nov 28, 2014

Capri142

Discussion Starter · Nov 25, 2014

My wife has an '06 NBC that has had its share of electrical issues. one of them has been the battery. Back in 2010, we had a problem with the battery going dead after a few days even though it appeared to be holding a full charge under load and according to the dealer the battery was fine but there was a short in the radio causing the problem. They wanted $700 to replace the radio. $700 for a radio! no way. So I took it across the street to an auto audio place and had an aftermarket radio installed that had a lot better sound and features than the stock radio. Anyway, that did not fix the problem. So I took the bug over to an Auto electric service shop and the first thing he did was was replace the battery...Which of course fixed the entire problem. The Beetle did the same thing again this past week, showing a full charge, even under load after jumping from my other car. Battery dead agaiin in 2 days. Just replaced the battery and all is well. So just wanted to let you know. If your VW is not starting and it is showing a full charge, it is still most likely that you need a new battery.

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Jeff2

· #2 · Nov 25, 2014

To be fair, four years out of a battery is pretty good.

As for the radio, our factory radio was definitely draining the battery. In our case the car had a new battery in it (looking at the date code on it), but wouldn't hold a charge over the weekend. I pulled the factory radio out and it hasn't done it since. I replaced ours with an aftermarket as well.

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pencilneck

· #3 · Nov 26, 2014

Capri142 said:
If your VW is not starting and it is showing a full charge, it is still most likely that you need a new battery.

Can you explain what method is being used to test the battery that is showing "a full charge"?

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jakenney

· #4 · Nov 27, 2014

Pencilneck - I am with ya - for a minute I was furiously searching my owners manual thinking I was missing a guage.

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jfoj

· #5 · Nov 28, 2014 (Edited)

First things first, many convertibles are fair weather garage queens. So is this car a daily driver or does it sit for weeks/months at a time??

Electrical issue are really not that hard to sort out, just too many people working on cars do not understand electricity.

Battery testing can be tricky, the most common method is using a load tester, this works well, ASSUMING the person doing the testing understands how batteries work and what to look for during a load test.

There are also newer inductive battery testers that are suggest for AGM batteries. Either way condemning a battery is not that hard. More often than not good batteries are considered/tested bad than the other way around.

If the car had a Monsoon audio system in the car, the external Monsoon Amplifiers are known to not fully shut off and drain a battery.

A parasitic load test is pretty easy to do if needed, it is not rocket science, however, many people to not understand how to properly perform them.

At the end if the day, if this car sits for over 2 weeks or more at a time, you need a Battery Tender - http://www.amazon.com/Battery-Tende...196050&sr=1-19&keywords=battery+switch+marine

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