Help Me Fix My Expensive Paperweight

I might be in for a bit of a shock tomorrow night then my nd has been sitting for 21 nights at Heathrow airport I’ll keep my fingers crossed

Might also be an idea to check the battery with the car running to check the alternator is working properly.

Hopefully your battery was in a better charged state though. I wonder if Heathrow has a shop selling overpriced jump packs :smiley:

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Thoughts and prayers are with you!

hopefully I have it covered I brought a jump pack with me it that fails I’m in the AA I will let you no if it starts

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Small update for you all.

Pulled the battery out of the car (YUASA 5000) which had a green light. Multimeter read 12.46 volts.

Interesting…

I hook up my smart charger (NOCO Genius 1), starts flashing red at me, which I believe indicates a <75% charge level.

Anyone feel less or more confident that the battery remains the issue?

The good news is that three weeks of unburnt aviation fuel (kerosene?) falling from the sky should have removed all your tar spots.

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Well there’s no harm in charging it to 100%.

Once it’s finished charging, take it off charge and wait a bit (apparently if it’s checked straight off a charge it can give false readings) and then take a multimeter reading. Wait maybe an hour and take a new reading and see if it’s discharged any, though I have seen a failing battery drop just from putting a multimeter on it :smiley:

If it hasn’t lost charge, put it back in the car and try starting the car, check the battery while running to check it’s getting its’ 14V~ of alternator charge and then switch off.

If it is, then you know the alternator is fine so leave it for several hours/overnight and check to see if there’s any large loss. If there is you know it’s being drained by something in the car.

If it isn’t then it was probably all just down to the failing battery and two weeks downtime, so probably just follow @Keat63’s advice of the full charge and decent run.

I’ll leave it up to other ND owners to recommend whether to disconnect the battery when not in use since I don’t know what that would do the electronics :slight_smile:

If it does turn out to be the battery, then presumably since it’s a new battery you can get it replaced under warranty through the place you bought it from.

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Have faith.

Nocos always start at the red flashing beginning and work through the testing stages. Give it a minute or so to see if it progresses through the 25% (red flashing) 50% (yellow flashing) 75% (Green flashing) to 100% green steady.
Here are some pictures of Nocos I use depending on requirement.

Noco 3500 and Noco 2+2
(normally on the 2+2 as it takes less from the mains on standby than either of the other two!)

Noco 1.
It took a minute to work through to green just now on a fully charged battery.

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I took the battery out of my ND1 once to run the recondition cycle on my CTEK charger. I don’t recall anything concerning when I put it back in apart from having to update a few settings that had returned to default. That’s not a recommendation - just my personal experience.

Will leave it charging overnight, see where it gets to. @RichardFX been on for about 5 hours now, still flashing red at me, so I assume the new battery has just been sat on a shelf for a while.

@Skadgeer Yeh, local garage will sort me out, they are decent chaps! Yep, will take it off charge, wait then put it back in the car, see what happens!

@MikeyC Thanks for the heads up.

That’s only a 1 Amp charger you have, so only 1 Ampere-hour going into the battery each hour.

If the battery was 45 Ah and properly “flat” it could take two days to recharge it fully!

Mind you, if it does take that long and ends up with Smart Noco saying “full”, then that battery is a good one with lots of capacity being filled up.

Cross fingers and hope for good luck!

@RichardFX Yes I did note that it might take in excess of 30hrs to charge fully. Totally here for it, I just want the car running again!

Thanks for the help, will update you tomorrow!

@RichardFX @Skadgeer Been plugged in for 15ish hours now, still flashing red, this battery was LOW!!

Hopefully you’ll manage to get the battery fully charged and your current troubles will be over. My rule of thumb: I have a CTEK MXS 5.0 battery charger. If my mx-5 remains unused for 2 weeks I put it on the charger and leave it on until next time I take it out, at which time the battery has been fully charged. When I do use the car I usually take it for a decent run of at least 20 miles. It works for me.

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@MX2000 Excellent, thank you. Battery just switched to flashing green (Bulk charge completed, optimising battery) so that’s excellent!

Just hope the car starts without needing to clear error codes, otherwise I’ll need to call out the garage!

On a separate note, does anyone know how this smart charger “optimises” or “Desulphates” the battery? Or is this purely marketing?

Cheers!

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According to the blurb the CTEK stages are:

  • Desulphation
  • Soft Start
  • Bulk
  • Absorption
  • Analysis
  • Recond
  • Float
  • Pulse

I expect other decent chargers do similar.

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(approx. half way down the page: How does desulfation work? )

I’d imagine the car will start without needing to clear error codes, but you should probably still get a garage to clear the codes so that any new codes that appear are new.

Maybe if it starts, run out to the garage and beg five minutes of their time to clear the codes?

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@Skadgeer Good plan, will update you either way :slight_smile:

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I have an optimate smart charger which I bought for my bike 20 years ago.
I now use this on the mx5.

I’ve had the car 10 years, and got tons of service history with it and nothing for a battery

I honestly believe that the battery being Panasonic is the original at 19 years old this year.
This has to be a record ???

Quite clearly the optimate is doing some good.

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I have “bricked” my car (2017 ND RF) more times than I want to admit.

The only scenario where I have matched your behaviour was when the batter had drained due to an aftermarket mod wired badly (by yours truly)

After putting the battery on a tender to charge it and refitting, the car came back to life without any errors :smiley:

If you want to know just how bad it can be this was the dash when it wouldn’t start…


And my personal favourite:

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