12v Battery problem

[Catlover]

My experience of setting the car in Ready mode is this...... I had a good number of bars in the main hybrid Battery, so the engine didn’t run until the bars had dropped down to about 3 (2 is the lowest bars I seen) then the petrol engines kicked to charge the main Battery up, then it cut out, then sometime later kicked back in again. I didn’t wait an hour, probably 40 minutes, in that time the engine kicked in 3 times.

What can you do in that hour? (Or 40 minutes in my case). Well, I read a book on my phone. Another club member says he washed his car, you could vac the car, or even polish it.  I use Williams or Renault waterless wash and polish with Carnuba wax in it. You can do your car In damp weather or a really hot day, really easy wax to work with. It can be used on you black trim, rubber (good on door seals), tyres, glass, chrome, paint, everything (polish not recommended for windscreen glass - re-election at night). So, you don’t just have to sit and twiddle your thumbs.

As I said in a previous post, warmer weather, more use of the vehicle and all of this will just be a blip in the bigger scheme of things.

[Roy124]

1.  I don't have keyless entry.

2.  5 Bars is my minimum

[BigRedSwitch]

I have an Auris so the Battery problem should be the same as that with the C-HR.  I have a strong suspicion that there is a parasitic drain in the mm equipment. I don't use the car very much and when I do the mm is switched off.  Mind you, I do apply run the car in "ready" mode for an hour or so, once a week.  I have every confidence that my car will always start.

[Roy124]

Slight variation.  I have the CTEK MXS 5 connected directly to the Battery.  It would be neater if I could fasten the positive feed to a connection other than the Battery post.  The CTEK connection is via an M8 washer style fastener.

I found lots of positive blade terminals in the adjacent (Corolla) fuse box but no post to which I could bolt a positive.  Is there one?

An alternative would be to modify the positive feed with a blade connection and use a blade terminal in the fuse box provided I can feed the wire out easily.

Any thoughts on either a positive terminal and bolt or a blade connection?

[Roy124]

It's a cracker.  Voltage this morning 12.3v.  This evening 3.3v.  The car was not moved or switched on between then and now.  Now on charge and hopefully it will come up quickly. 

After 5 minutes it is 5.8v.  The odd thing is the rear lights are on, the interior lights are off though the bonnet and door open displays are also working.  The boot will not open.

15 minutes later, one headlight is on too.  

[Mooly]

Well that doesn't sound good...

Electronics can do weird things when voltage is slowly ramped down (Battery going very very flat) and then ramped up (voltage slowly rising on charge). Invalid states can occur and in these instances a 'global reset' is needed such as by disconnecting the Battery for a few minutes.

If you do disconnect the Battery then I would fully charge it before reconnecting.

 

 

 

 

[Roy124]

Mooly, still coming up slowly.  After 45 minutes I could open the tailgate, the left headlight was now on and the right now off.  It told me to switch the lights off and this time it worked.  Charger still showing less than 12.5v so will leave it to do its thing over night but 12v to 3v in a day.  I feel a trip to the dealer coming on.

[Mooly]

If the Battery is totally shot then 12v to 3v is possible. Actual accurate readings are very important. If the Battery is showing 12.5 now and after only a short charge time then that suggests it is seriously deteriorated and has minimal capacity. A flat but otherwise healthy Battery would load the charger much more and it would not be able to maintain a 12.5 volt level yet. Only as the battery reached higher states of charge would the voltage rise. For it to rise so quickly suggests it is behaving more like a battery of only a couple of Ah capacity.

The bottom line is something is obviously amiss.

Maybe the battery has suffered with all time spent in a low state of charge rather than there be a 'genuine' fault on the car. It does seem from all the battery issues we hear about that there is an underlying issue of excess current drain that requires more than is a reasonable time spent driving (or in ready mode) to replenish. It no good if you have to drive a couple of hours a day to keep the battery at 100% SOC (state of charge) because so much is being taken out of it when parked up.

Good luck anyway and let us know how you get on.   

 

[Roy124]

Mooly, I have just checked and the charger is showing 3 lights which suggests it has reached the 12.5 v and is now ramping up to the 14.5 v and will, I hope, be down to a float charge by morning.  The car has been used almost every day this past week including 60 miles yesterday.  Quite what happened today I don't know.  It's the sort of thing that shatters one's confidence in the car.

I am considering getting a booster Battery just in case.  Clearly when a charger alone is connected there is insufficient power from the charger alone to energise the system.  I wonder if a booster Battery would work; I think it should. 

[Mikw]

1 hour ago, Roy124 said:

Mooly, I have just checked and the charger is showing 3 lights which suggests it has reached the 12.5 v and is now ramping up to the 14.5 v and will, I hope, be down to a float charge by morning.  The car has been used almost every day this past week including 60 miles yesterday.  Quite what happened today I don't know.  It's the sort of thing that shatters one's confidence in the car.

I am considering getting a booster battery just in case.  Clearly when a charger alone is connected there is insufficient power from the charger alone to energise the system.  I wonder if a booster battery would work; I think it should. 

Blimey, that's crazy!

You'd think that using the car everyday, and the 60 mile journney yesterday would be more than enough to keep the Battery charged up to an acceptable level.

I have a new shape Yaris and use it every two or three days for an hour or so, i'm beginning to think it's not going to be enough based on your experiences with the Corolla.

[Devon Aygo]

5 hours ago, Roy124 said:

It's a cracker.  Voltage this morning 12.3v.  This evening 3.3v.  The car was not moved or switched on between then and now.  Now on charge and hopefully it will come up quickly. 

After 5 minutes it is 5.8v.  The odd thing is the rear lights are on, the interior lights are off though the bonnet and door open displays are also working.  The boot will not open.

15 minutes later, one headlight is on too.  

May seem unconnected but what software versions are installed in your head unit?

Press Setup button then on screen scroll down in left menu until your get software update, select this and you should have DCU,MEU and Mapdb

[Roy124]

Devon, will do.  Right now the charger is at the 13.5v stage.  I will have words with the garage too.  

DCU 17TDT2EU-DA31 and MEU is -FA10

Mapdb 2019 V2

Audio 1075 (updated on 22/3/21

Nav 1120

 

[Mooly]

14 hours ago, Roy124 said:

Clearly when a charger alone is connected there is insufficient power from the charger alone to energise the system.  I wonder if a booster battery would work; I think it should. 

There could be a couple of reasons for this...

Firstly a charger in itself should be able to supply all and more that the basic electronics need to power up the car but what might be happening is a combination of one or two things.

Firstly the charger voltage will be pulled down by the discharged Battery. How long it stays at a low level really depends on how much capacity the Battery has (what I mentioned earlier). Secondly, because the electronics may be in an 'indeterminate state' things may be energised that shouldn't be... such as the headlights I think you mentioned. Even just one normal headlight will pull more current than many chargers can deliver and so that alone will prevent the Battery from taking much charging current.

Would a booster battery work... that depends on the form it takes. A conventional 'jump start' from a suitable battery would supply all that was needed. A battery pack with a protected and current limited output may not.

 

[Roy124]

Mooly, I think your first point is correct.  The measured voltage while charging was initially less that 5v and later just less than 6v.  When trying to start lots of flashing lights etc with, as you say, random energising.

Regarding a booster Battery, as it is made for the purpose it should not be too current limited.  I know with some Battery packs the requirement was to leave it connected for a few minutes which would, I presume, level up the capacity of the car Battery.  I have a particular booster in mind, a Noco Boost that is rated at 500 amps,  but I have asked Honest John for a recommendation.  I shall see what he suggests.

 

[FROSTYBALLS]

2 minutes ago, Roy124 said:

but I have asked Honest John for a recommendation.  I shall see what he suggests.

The Honest John site went into administration February 2020, and was bought by Heycars. Honest John no longer has any involvement in the website.

[Roy124]

28 minutes ago, FROSTYBALLS said:

The Honest John site went into administration February 2020, and was bought by Heycars. Honest John no longer has any involvement in the website.

Oh, thank you.  Still they do offer advice.  I did wonder why he was not answering personally.

[Mooly]

1 hour ago, Roy124 said:

I have a particular booster in mind, a Noco Boost that is rated at 500 amps,  but I have asked Honest John for a recommendation.  I shall see what he suggests.

I wasn't aware of Honest Johns situation either.

500 amps... right then... that is a lot of current (I try and look objectively at these things as electronics was the day job). What you are looking at is probably as good as any similar unit, and so these are just my thoughts as I see it.

If those leads and clips combined have a total resistance of just 15 milliohms (and that's pretty low) then if the Battery could deliver 500 amps @ 12 volts then you would find 7.5 volts would be 'lost' across those cables and clips. They would be red hot in seconds.

500 amps at 12 volts is 6 kilowatts, that is six one bar electric fires worth. It's just not going to happen imo. You could get several tens of amps from a small Battery for a short period of time and you could get an initial 'peak' current much higher than that but peak is an undefined term. Is it for 1 second, 0.1 seconds... it could be anything.

The physical size of the booster tells you that the Battery capacity will be relatively small, typically like a laptop battery. Possibly using cells of around 4Ah capacity... which is fine for it's intended infrequent use.

Back to the flashing lights and so on. What always worries me in situations like that is whether or not the various systems are able to reset automatically when power is restored. You are probably familiar with various home gadgets, PC's, routers, TV's etc etc that can occasionally do something strange and the only fix is a hard reset by removing power. It is an unknown with the car whether any systems can remain in a non valid state if the voltage has dropped slowly and then risen slowly as with a battery discharge and charge cycle. These could be systems you aren't even aware of, something in the entertainment system... anything... and if it is in a locked state then it may (we don;t know) be causing an excess current draw.

So a huge number of unknowns. It would be good to have an official acknowledgement and statement from Toyota over all these  issues and questions. 

 

 

 

      

 

 

[Roy124]

The NoCo, staring a hybrid, will need only a fraction of the power that a 4l petrol car would need.  I think they state it is not suitable for a diesel.

I bought a set of jump leads in France many many years ago.  The biggest problem is stowing the leads.  As someone once said 'they are very good', can I find them now 😞

The car is going in for a check on the 19th.

[Mooly]

3 hours ago, Roy124 said:

The NoCo, staring a hybrid, will need only a fraction of the power that a 4l petrol car would need.  I think they state it is not suitable for a diesel.

Yes, that is true enough. I was more looking at the way it was advertised... reminds me of the way audio gear used to be specified, for example 150 watts total peak music power which when it was all reduced down to the industry accepted way of specifying would come out at something 10 watts rms. That is the way of the world and advertising though.

The figure you really want if it is available is what maximum short (and long) term current is allowed to be drawn from the device. That would tell you more about whether it would have the ability to get past that point you mentioned earlier about the various rear and headlights lights coming on and how the voltage slowly climbed when on charge. Now would this portable power pack have sufficient output to be able to cope with that.

One of the most useful facts would be for Toyota to provide a figure for quiescent current draw from the Battery when the car is parked up and locked. It must be available somewhere as it is one of the basic things to know... in other words how much all the systems draw in a quiescent state. Also what the maximum charge rate is i.e how much current can the Battery draw on charge.

Armed with with those two bits of information you could make a good educated guess as to how long a fully charged Battery should last and also how much driving time would be needed to replenish it.

[Roy124]

On your last point, the answer would appear to be one week (or was it month) and one hour based on their recommendation.  Hopefully that is not a deep cycle period but 50% of better.  Could still be a problem or a fortnight holiday or longer.

At an airport Valet Parking would solve that issue as they would be the ones getting it started - provided they did it before you rang them from arrivals. 🙂

[Mooly]

 A week is not long at all, a month is more reasonable. You would struggle to fully charge a flat 35Ah Battery in an hour even under aggressive test conditions.

The numbers tell a story... a flat 35Ah Battery needs a bit more than 35Ah worth of charge feeding back into it (the charge process is not 100% efficient) and to do that in one hour would generate over 0.5kW of heat in the Battery (35A flowing at a terminal voltage of 15  or more volts). So that battery would overheat. 

And this is where I think part of the problem lies, the battery may begin 100% charged and after say a week it is at say 50% charge. You drive and it gets back to 95%. To put that last bit back needs a lot longer and if a similar discharge occurs again then the battery might reach 45% and only get back to 90% and so on.

The lower the long term state of charge, the faster the battery deteriorates (they like to be kept fully charged). So now you have a battery that might only have 30Ah rather than 35Ah as it was when new. 

And so the process goes on, the battery charge level gets progressively lower and the capacity progressively less over weeks and months. 

You then fully charge the battery at home and bring it back to 100% but you are now working with a battery that even when fully charged might only have 70% of its original Ah capacity. 

And so on and so on.

That's my take on it all and a possible scenario as to what is happening.

  

[Roy124]

Mooly, I checked it is one hour per week so you have a problem with a two week holiday!

[jtrav4]

On 4/6/2021 at 12:22 PM, FROSTYBALLS said:

The Honest John site went into administration February 2020, and was bought by Heycars. Honest John no longer has any involvement in the website. 

This is a review from the Honest John Site, unfortunately I live in a block of flats so no dive or garage. Does anyone know if these charger packs would be any good on a hybrid.  

https://kit.honestjohn.co.uk/reviews/review-ring-high-power-micro-jump-starter/

[Roy124]

55 minutes ago, jtrav4 said:

This is a review from the Honest John Site, unfortunately I live in a block of flats so no dive or garage. Does anyone know if these charger packs would be any good on a hybrid.  

https://kit.honestjohn.co.uk/reviews/review-ring-high-power-micro-jump-starter/

Good review.  Looks ideal, especially if you are unable to use a charger.

The RA-RPPL200 can be had for £45.95 and considerably cheaper than the 300.  the difference is the former is 6,000ma capacity against 13,000ma.  Double the capacity for £31 extra.

[Catlover]

Hi John, that charger would work very well on a hybrid like your ch-r.   The 12v Battery on Toyota Hybrids only used to do some basics including waking up the big hybrid Battery. You probably know there is no starter motor in a Toyota hybrid, a starter motor takes a lot of power to turn an engine. If that charger started a 3 litre petrol car then it will easily do a Toy. hybrid. By the time you contact that unit across the terminals under the bonnet and got back to the car cockpit it should be ready to light up the dashboard. With no mains power available it looks a good option. I got a similar unit of Amazon, not a Ring (a Suaoki) for around £40.