Greetings,

F2 2012 SD4 auto with Premium audio system.

Parked with engine off while waiting for SWMBO for about 5/6 minutes with radio on, plug in satnav on, dashcam on (front and rear, fitted with power magic to cut out if battery gets low. I didn't look at the dashcams to see if they were on, just assumed they were on as normal). Went to start the engine and saw a message on the radio information display screen "Battery Low". The engine turned over and started normally then the message disappeared and everything went as normal. This was the first trip of the day of about 2 miles.

While the meaning of the message is perfectly clear, why did it appear in the radio display screen? Is it because the ignition was off and the message centre on the dashboard was off? As expected, there is nothing in the handbook about it.

J

i have those on my screen nearly every morning, dashcams front and rear still on and the headrest tv's still on standby

A charge with the Ctek and all's good for a couple of days, the FL2 battery is pants for a power hungry car on start up Former Mod/Member, with the most post & Chicken George Arch nemesis

Not uncommon, as already said, FL2's and indeed most modern cars are really very power hungry, with all the various ECUs powered up it's not uncommon to see a current draw of 25 amps or so with just the ignition on, hence the warning message after a short while.

Thanks guys. That confirms my thoughts, I'll keep my eye on it but as the starter seems to spin up as fast as ever (about half a second to start - after any glowplug time) I won't do anything until starting is affected.

J

TBH, I very much doubt your battery is likely to be ready for replacing yet, it's just that they have a limited capacity to keep a lot of stuff running when the engine isn't running to keep it topped up.

I just replaced the battery on mine, bear in mind though it's quite a bit older than yours and it was the original. It still seemed to start easily enough but the voltage was dropping to about 10 volts on cranking, that was enough to cause a fair number of "comms error" messages to be flagged up on the fault code reader so I took that as an early warning to replace it before it let me down.

My car seems to shut down after roughly 5 minutes. I can hear a few clicks and noises in the boot. So you may need to close the car and lock it without the alarm off while you are inside then check with a multimeter or better still a DC clamp meter with small enough resolution. Procrastination, mankind's greatest labour saving device!

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