BMW Battery Life Support???

verde2002

verde2002

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I bought a BMW original battery a bit over two years ago and used it for a year and have had it sitting for a bit over a year now. I took it out and tried charging it and at most I get 11.5V and nothing more. BMW's warranty is 2 years only so the option of exchange isn't available. Any advice on how I may be able to revive this battery? It would be a shame to throw away the battery that has barely any use on it.
 
Is this a sealed battery or can you check/add distilled water to the cells?

If that doesn't work there are two bad options:
- Put a AA battery in series and you will have 13V :).
- Ordinance for the RAF, next to Mr.Bumps ZF transmission.
 
Looks to be sealed. There is a small window to peek into. When I peek it is yellow inside. It is suposed to show green yellow or black based on the diagram. Not sure what they mean but I would asume green is a good battery. it was black originally, got it to yellow but now need to get it to green.
 
Photo of Battery

Here is a photo.
 

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Your battery is dead and can't be revived unfortunately. It at least needs a small trickle charge to last a year, I too have found this out the hard way.
 
Ouch!!! That really hurts. It is interesting how BMW does not pro-rate their batteries like most other manufacturers. It is a straight forward two year unlimited miles warranty.
 
I leave my batteries on a Yeusa Hotshot battery tender. Had he same batt in my M3 for close to ten years.
 
http://www.saveabattery.com/ works good for me. I have a few different cars and batteries, this thing works out exactly what kind of battery it is and acts accordingly, it even has a conditioning cycle, which if a car is not going to be used for more than a month it cycles the battery up and down as if it was being used.

They are a little more expensive than the other chargers out there, but the information it gives me I like.
I had/have an Odyssey PC 1200 battery in a car (not E9) which i had been told was shot by the shop, I decided to try this on it and it worked, it didn’t want to do anything from zero, so I kick started the battery with a jumpstarter to get some power in and then this took it up to 14V and I now leave it for a few weeks and it is fine. It may have been a bad read by the shop or I just got lucky, but it worked.

I can’t claim to be impartial; I do know the guy who invented the system. He is a car lover/collector like us all, had exactly the same problem and decided to invent a product that works.

So far I like it.
 
As a replacement I recommend Bosch for about $100 from the local Pep Boys. Looks kind of like a Varta and speaks German. But probably made in where else .... I have not checked country of origin.
 
Update!!!!!!!

For the last three days I have been continuously charging the battery with my small Gariots Garage battery tender type charger and the voltage has come up to 12.6 volts. The small window still is yellow which is not a good sign, I am hoping it turns green indicating the battery is good. I have my fingers crossed as the cahrging continues on.
 
I use a "battery tender jr".
I also have an antique motorcycle and 2 very large batteries that are for my rv trlr.
The motorcycle lives on the front porch during the winter and is always on the charger.
I rotate the other "jr" charger from the coupe to the trlr batteries as needed.

They will not revive a dead battery, will need a normal charger to bring up and the "tender " to keep up and ready. It is more a maintainer with small amounts of charging.

The best thing about the "battery tender jr" is that you can see by the lights if it is hooked up correctly/incorrectly, charging status. Plus they aren't very expensive, $<30 on ebay.

They have 2 hook-ups for the charger, one is heavy alligator clips and the other is a harness that stays attached to the battery and plugs in to the wiring harness.

Batteries are expensive for the amount of use for underused vehicles. Keep the batteries charged up and they last normal length of time, 5-7 years. If you let them die without keeping charged, 1-2 years.

They also make a multiple battery charger/ maintainer.

Works very well, especially for the price!

steve
 
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