Stanky's Car Fixing Thread - New Battery Day 25/10

[Stanky]

For a while now the Dacia battery has been a bit crap, needing putting on the trickle charger about once a month. It does generally get used for local duties, doing 5-10 miles at a time, but gets longer runs fairly often. Now its getting colder, it seems to be worse so the trigger was pulled on a new battery from the excellent Tayna.co.uk.

As usual, it arrived within 48h. I trickle charged it overnight and fitted it this morning. I opted for a mid-price Yuasa ESB with more CCAs and Ah than what was on there currently. I came mildly unstuck when I realised that the new battery was about 40mm longer than the old one, and the battery tray has a weird plastic protrusion to hold the OEM battery in place

However 20 minutes with a hacksaw blade, stanley knife and a bit of sandpaper had that removed and sanded flat, and the new battery then fitted like a glove.

As usual, once the new battery was installed and the ignition put on, the dashboard lit up like Blackpool, but a short drive, turning the steering wheel lock-to-lock and confirming that the tyre pressures were OK had it settled down again. What was a little bit interesting* was all the errors it threw for things our base Sandero doesn't have. I got TPM, front radar, rear electric windows and something else warnings on first startup but these went away after I turned the ignition off then on again. 

Not radically interesting, but cost me less than half what Dacia wanted for a new battery of lesser spec. There seems to be a bit of internet noise about the longevity of the OEM batteries on Dacias, with lots crapping out with similar symptoms to mine at 3-4 years old, which ours is. I guess its one of the ways that Dacia can sell them so cheap and still make money on them but its a bit annoying. Anyway, the new battery should last another 5 years or so I hope.

One further annoyance is the SOS system, it began to flash up errors about a year ago intermittently, and has got worse and worse to the point its now on more than off. Apparently the system has its own battery in the dashboard somewhere which conks out after a while and throws the error. Alternatively it could be the GSM aerial being broken too. Anyway, I'll leave it for now but make sure it gets looked at when the car is in for its next service next summer. Dashboard warning lights bug the hell out of me, but my wife who is the primary driver isn't bothered by them at all - especially if its something like the SOS function which sh'd never use anyway so its not a big deal.

I'll keep the old battery as I have a 12v > 120w 3-pin plug inverter which might be handy in a power cut potentially. It'd keep a load of LED lights working for a few hours at least.

[mk2_craig]

3 hours ago, Stanky said:

There seems to be a bit of internet noise about the longevity of the OEM batteries on Dacias, with lots crapping out with similar symptoms to mine at 3-4 years old, which ours is. I guess its one of the ways that Dacia can sell them so cheap and still make money on them but its a bit annoying.

Certainly not limited to Dacia. Current shape Ford Focus, and especially the ST like mine, are also significantly prone to the same issue.