Battery Monitor

[Strop]

Does anyone have a battery monitor fitted to their start battery?

Does it wake your vehicle?

[shack]

Does anyone have a battery monitor fitted to their start battery?

Does it wake your vehicle?You'll need to be a bit more specific..

[drivesafe]

Hi Laurie, what sort of battery monitor are you using?

[Strop]

BM2 fitted.

Dealer telling me it is waking the car up every 45 minutes.

[drivesafe]

Hi again Laurie and that is total B/S.

Your BM2 draws less than 1/1000 of the power my isolators draw, and my isolators do NOT wake up vehicles.

If the Bluetooth signal in the BM2 is waking uptake D5 there is something wrong in the D5.

But this is easy to check, simply remove the BM2 and see if there is still a problem.

[drivesafe]

One more question for you Laurie, is this problem only occurring at home?

[Strop]

Hi Tim,

The electrics in this car are scaring me.

I have just put a new battery in (Varta). The next morning after getting home (2 hr drive home) I got the low battery warning. 11.4 volts. That should not be, obviously. That day I put the new battery monitor on. From then the BM2 is showing a constant power drain so it became a cycle of battery charger then power drain till it went to the dealership.

They have said that the earth connection needs replacing but they have done a temp fix. Their testing also showed that the BM2 was waking the car every 45 minutes but once removed the car was only waking every 12 hrs as normal.

The initial battery drain with the new battery points to something else. Also the adding of something across a battery that only draws 1.5 mA should not drain a battery or wake a car I would have thought. Hence my initial question.

I think I will have to have some further discussions with them but I wanted to be sure of the BM2 before I did. It could be faulty but I will have to get it back to test on another vehicle.

Whilst my testing was at home I don’t think it was my phone trying to connect all the time. The app was closed and of a night it was out of range. At the dealership it was definitely out of range unless they tried using the app.

What I should add is that battery drain was evident with the old battery before it kicked the bucket. They, U am sure, will say that was a battery issue not the car draining it.

[shack]

I know nothing of the D5, but are you locking the vehicle at night?

It would be good to get a few days logging with the bm2 to analyse.

[drivesafe]

Hi Laurie and this is a long shot.

Where is the power board for your house and is it a new digital type with Bluetooth.

The reason I ask is that I had a customer who's NEW D4 was doing what what yours is doing "IF" he parked nose first into his garage, but if he backed in, no problems.

His power board was on the opposite side of the wall at the back of his garage.

Again, just a long shot!

[Strop]

No, Powerboard is a long way away. My computer is close though but I would not expect it to randomly connect. Same with my phone. If the app is set up to not use background refresh it should only work if you are looking at it.

Either way why would it wake up the vehicle? Surely a Bluetooth connection would not pull enough current to awaken the car.

[oka374]

Lots of things that emit RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) can affect a vehicle, Landrover don't have a good rep for shielding electronics from RFI, ask anyone who has fitted a HF radio to a TD5 powered Landy, virtually unusable while the engine is running and if you transmitted while the engine was running it would often stop.
To be fair though many other vehicles suffer from poor electronic shielding as well, mates Subaru would cark it if we selcalled him while he was driving, Pajero V6's would stumble and nearly cut out if you transmitted from my vehcle and they were within several car lengths. Worked well if you wanted to overtake one on a hill in a laden Troopy ;-)))

[p38arover]

My P38A couldn't be locked/unlocked with the keyfob when parked at St Marys railway station when I worked in the signal box there. I didn't use the public parking spot but in the staff parking next to a hut that had radio transceivers in there.

[drivesafe]

Hi Laurie and my apologies, I have just had a Triple Bypass and a Pacemaker inserted in my chest and they are filling me up with drugs, morning, noon and night, so my head is still off with the fairies.


If my head had been with it, going on your BM2 graph, it actually confirms your BM2 is NOT activating the Bluetooth in your D5 and your Bluetooth is NOT turning on at all.

If the D5 Bluetooth was being continually activated, the graph would be of a saw tooth shape. Where the voltage would drop as the D5’s Bluetooth activated and then the voltage would rise slightly again when the D5’s Bluetooth turned off.

You have something that is applying a HUGE current draw from the instant you turn your ignition off.


In one of our phone conversations, you stated you could hear a buzzing or clicking sound.

What you need to do is start pulling fuses. One at a time, until you stop the buzzing, which should then help you find the problem.

[Strop]

That is exactly what I thought too Tim.

They have done a software update also. Perhaps that might fix the issues. I will have to look at it pretty closely when I pick the car up in a week or so. Might have to set up my multi-meter and check voltage hourly and record what is happening. Surely they wont be able to say that is waking the car up like they have with the BM2. Also bought myself a clamp meter so I can see what kind of draws are occurring in an attempt to find out what is normal.

I also thought that if the car was being woken every 45 minutes by the BM2 and that was the cause of the battery drain then it would not be a consistent curve being shown but a jagged line as the power goes on/off. The BM2 is indicating a consistent draw.

Put a few more graphs up also.

Look after yourself Tim.

[drivesafe]

Hi Laurie, your last graph is the most interesting.

It clearly shows you have lost at least 50% of your battery's capacity in just 12 hours.

Forget all the pulses, the main loss occurs without any interruptions and that sort of battery capacity loss is being caused by at least a 5 amp continuous load applied to the battery.

That is not the D5 waking up. It is a continuous load being applied.

[biggin]

Check for mV across fuses. Any reading shows a parasitic draw.

[Strop]

I pick the car up tomorrow. They have done a software update and reset it for a new battery. They tell me that there is no battery drain but have removed my battery monitor. They also tell me that the battery monitor was pulling 35mA about 20x what it should but will test it myself when I get it home. That was obviously not the issue.

Tim, I had a similar number in mind for the draw so should be easy to test for. I assume they removed the battery monitor so it is totally standard for their testing.

Now trying to find out if there is a threshold draw where the car is woken up.

For my own peace of mind I am going to test the draw from stopping the car & locking till it goes to sleep to see what it is pulling and for how long. Lock myself in the boot and watch the meter.

[Strop]

Well I got the car today and they said it was fixed. No sound coming from it they told me. Too noisy to check. They told me they had the car parked in their shed over xmas and new year and no low battery warning. They reported no battery drain.

Got it home (110 Km) and parked it (double locked) about 1pm. Out to the car at 7.30pm open the door and low battery warning. 11.9 volts. I knew that was going to happen as I could hear the electrical whirring sound when I went out. Lot quieter environment. Guess what I said.

Locked myself in the back of the car and put the amp clamp on and took readings. Double locked the car and the clamp showed 4.3 amps. 15 minutes later still basically the same. That is a good drain. Jumped to 7.5 when I unlocked the car.

Dealer sent email. Wonder if they will call tomorrow?

[Blknight.aus]

Might not be of help but....

I've recently.had a fix on a not loandrover with a similar issue,

Turned out to be a bad connection one of the environmental.control flaps, similar symptoms and the humming noise was the flap stepper trying to wind the external air flap closed but the becm wasn't getting the position signals.back so it just kept cycling the stepper from limit to limit.

Turning the ac off before shutting down the engine seemed to fix it temporarily and a simple disconnect reconnect the harness for the vent motor/position sensors.fixed it.

Hope it's something similar and nothing exotic.

[drivesafe]

Hi Laurie and this is a long shot, but have you tried checking for a discharge in your D5 when it's somewhere other than at your home.

The fact that it did not play for the dealer while at the dealers ( so they reckon ) but plays up at your place, it may very well be something local causing the problem.

Next time you go shopping, try testing it in the carpark while at the shopping centre.

As Ron pointed out, the fob key could be effected by storage things and it was commonplace for the door security at Amal chemists to block the fob key on early discos.

I had a problem that took a while to figure out, where if my wireless head phones on my stereo system where left on, I could not lock or unlock my brand new D2.

So just maybe something at your place is tripping the D5s Bluetooth!

[Strop]

We have a diagnosis. Faulty alternator/generator that won’t shut down so continuously drawing current. New battery stuffed - don’t know how but that is what they said. Now the wait for parts.

They also found someone had cut into the wiring harness (previous owner) but still asked me what I had added. Cost shifting strategy I think.