Thread: How long is the life of your D4 battery?

My Jan 2010 D4 battery replaced under warranty last November, i.e nearly 3 years.
I think it was on the edge a long time before that. Only indication was it would fail to start (no attempt to wind at all) if say I had doors open packing for a trip, or hooked up fault mate for a few minutes. A couple of minutes on the charger and it would start. Charger would indicated it was half way down, but to full charge in a few minutes.
I was getting intermittent water in fuel circuit alarms so thought it might be battery related. I took it in to Trivett and ask them to check, they said it was faultly and replaced under warranty. I got the Varta battery, should have hung on bit longer.
(Turned out water in fuel circuit intermittent faults continued, this was rectified under warranty by replacing fuel filter housing which has the intermittent wiring fault on water sensor circuit.)

Regards
Gerry

In the end the roadside assistance guy didn't have the right size battery to swap over, so the car was driven home (2kms) and left at the side of the road for the tow truck to then tow it to the nearest dealer.

They did their testing, and a battery were ordered and fitted this morning, for a lunchtime pickup. All done under warranty. Woohoo! It is the new AGM battery.

Now... the oil weep from O/S turbo has recurred and they have ordered a new scavenger pipe and said it is blowing excessive smoke. All to also be done under warranty. Hopefully can get this all done by this coming week as well.

Thanks to you all for your input and experiences. Who would have guessed this topic would have brought so many reports out of the woodwork.

Gotaflat, to where does that black wire from the battery negative terminal go? That looks suspiciously like incorrect wiring where the load doesn't pass through the battery load monitor.

Originally Posted by disco4now

(Turned out water in fuel circuit intermittent faults continued, this was rectified under warranty by replacing fuel filter housing which has the intermittent wiring fault on water sensor circuit.)

Mine caused water faults when driven through puddles so I put silicone over the connector because the service people didn't read what I wrote and assumed there had been water inside so didn't fix it. Even when requested at a later service the faulty wiring was not replaced hence my silicone is the fix.

Originally Posted by Graeme

Gotaflat, to where does that black wire from the battery negative terminal go? That looks suspiciously like incorrect wiring where the load doesn't pass through the battery load monitor.

Its a good question. Its the system that charges the Thumper in the back (when and if I put it in and plug it in). So its the Blue Apple 50 amp charging kit/low voltage regulator. I had it installed some time ago back in Melbourne when I was living there.

I did wonder if it was right? is it wrong? as I had it installed by a 'professional' I assumed it was all ok? (yes assumptions are ..... ).

OS: I do want to take it out and install a full Traxide system with HC pass through (so still be able to charge the Thumper). I have not got around to it due to time constraints. and wondering if I leave it there for something else....

If there is any earth connection to the body from the charger or its voltage regulator or from the Thumper then it will adversely affect the charging of the main battery. Regardless, any draw-down of the Thumper battery is not going to register via the main battery load monitor when recharging so has the ability to impact the charging of both batteries.

I would move the black wire to an earth stud near the battery.

Originally Posted by gotaflat

Mine died on the weekend, 2 years 1 month - Jump started for next few days with the Thumper until back in Perth.

Dealer in Perth was really good and replaced under warranty. They said they have not replaced many at Southerns (and the service guy was surprised at the size of the battery, not to mention the price on the order form at $530....) , but they got one over from Barbagallo and dropped in.

As the forum has noted, replaced the Varta with Exide 850cca AGM....

Didn't take any notice what the original in mine was, but the replacement in it now is the Exide. Was fitted by Barbagallo's where I bought it.

Originally Posted by eddomak

I don't know if it is still the case, but I remember that when the D4 was first in the showrooms they all had flat batteries from staying "awake" so much with the doors opened and closed etc. In the end a lot of them had their batteries disconnected, the doors unlocked on request, or the batteries connected up to chargers regularly. Wouldn't surprise me that the battery of a demo would be in bad condition.

Yes - didn't really surprise me too much either. When I first saw it, was about the only demo of that model they had out the front and it was doing a lot of short, stop / start running around the neighbourhood. The salesperson who sold it to me was taking it home at night - she lives about 5 minutes from the dealership. They were very apologetic about it when it failed after only a few days, especially as I had pointed out when I collected it that it did not sound like it was carrying a full charge. No harm done though - I got to test drive a new Freelander for a couple of days - and that one was a Diesel HSE - very nice to drive, especially around the city.