Thread: How long can I park a D3td and still start it ?

Originally Posted by discojools

Strange that is post has just appeared.. Have been wondering why my D4 has been a bit sluggish starting after a couple of days left..thought it might have been a duff battery so took it to the new Melbourne LR dealer to have it checked..they said nothing wrong with main or second battery and that some thing in the car is draining the main battery. Have to take it back to them in the New Year for a couple of days for them to trace the problem. They are saying that it is probably a module that is not shutting down properly.

This all started after I left the car with my panel beater in July for a few weeks while overseas. He let the battery get quite low,wonder if that has triggered the problem.

What sort of tripping ?

More recently I only get around town and not that far....
My secondary has been copping it a bit thou, so I am about to give it a full weekend's worth of charge, may even actually do the main as well, its been close to 8 months since I have done a long enough run (by my stanards) to get a full charge plus into the batteries... (I class country run of over 4 hours should be enough).

Admiral,
All my trips are 30-40k as we live nearly in the bush.. The dealer said they had tested the battery and that it is fine. I think there is a way of testing the battery's condition isn't there? They told me that with everything switched off that there was .13 milliamp (i think) drawing when it should have been .03 milliamp. I can't be sure whether those are the figures he told me but certainly the amount of power drawing was more than it should have been.
Does anybody know what the battery should be drawing when car all off?

Can't recall off the top of my head (I have it written down somewhere), but it's a lot more than 0.03ma. The most common item to not shut down correctly is the infotainment centre. There was also a problem with some RRS's (so perhaps D3's as well) where the rear door latch was drawing current unnecessarily.

We leave the car for up to 4 weeks without problems starting.

Cheers,

Gordon

Hi folks and you are not asking the question in the right context.

The problem with leaving any vehicle for any long term period is not how long the cranking battery will last per say.

If you have been doing lots of short trips before you leave your rig parked up, then there is a good chance you will come back to a flat battery.

It is how well the battery is charged before you leave it that will govern how long it is LIKELY to last.

If you know you are going to be leaving your D3/D4/RRS for a long unused period, make sure the battery is fully charged and/or have some sort of charge maintenance in place.

This could be a battery charger or, where practical, a 10w solar panel will probably do the best job of looking after your battery(s) and for the lowest set up cost.

Mine was fine after 9-10 weeks in the container, put the key in the ignition here expecting it to be as flat as a fart and it fired first turn. I have the TDV8 battery, no noticeable drop off in cranking speed when it turned over.

I have left mine for 3 months late last year when we went over sea's to the US.
I also did expect it not to fire as we all know these vehicles ARE battery critical, but she did fire first button push.
I had all intentions of disconnecting the earth terminal, but in the last minute rush ahh!.............I forgot :-)

As Drivesafe has said a small solar panel does wonders (especially in the 10MY+ vehicles) as it keeps the battery topped up, especially if you do small trips. The generator does its best to top up the charge, but if you don't do a long journey, the battery is being maintained at its critical point, it doesn't take long for it to fall over.

My battery failed about a month or so ago, just got into the vehicle & hit the start button & bam..early Christmas....
Myself & 2 other techs checked the battery initially to say it was fine, charged all day & thought that was that. But 4 days later it failed to start again rechecked to find a failed battery, bad cell.

If you are checking your battery give the side a good kick, you may find good one second, bad the next.

Cheers

Sent from my iPad using Forum Runner

Originally Posted by drivesafe

This could be a battery charger or, where practical, a 10w solar panel will probably do the best job of looking after your battery(s) and for the lowest set up cost.

How would you suggest this be set up? Would a panel sitting on the dash in the sun plugged into the Aux socket (after the relay bypass so they are alway live) work? Or has anyone used the DISCO3 plug that goes into the trailer socket for that?

Hi Glynhouse,
I regularly leave my unattended, lets say, I have a small CTEK charger I leave hooked up for extended absences, seems to work fine for me. I have a solar panel hooked up to my camper trailer battery, the camper trailer doesn't get used as often as it should do, possibly three months at a time, with the solar panel I've always had a fully charged battery when I've gone away. I use the solar panel to charge the car batteries when I'm away as well. I have the Piranah DSE 180S I think it is which has a solar facility, I've got a plug mounted in the front of the car so whilst I'm camped the solar panel replaces power used by the fridge etc.