Intermittent death - lots of potential causes checked

[Foeux]

Back sooner than anticipated...

Dear friends,

For any of you with continued interest or ideas, thank you very much.

The problem has arisen again.

Went to take car to train station after 2 days of no use and heavy rain.

Car turned engine 4 times before behaving like it was totally dead. No time to check what's going on, took another car instead, sulked moderately.

Back home today so went to do my checks. Before showing it any ignition or anything I pinged bonnet. Battery sitting at 12.29v

With multi' across battery, I turned on ignition, small drop to 11.9v which rose almost instantly to 12.27v (no lights etc).

Began to crank engine (having heard fuel pump and a relay go click as soon as ignition was turned. 12.27v dropped over 3 seconds of very slow cranking to 4.14v and then nothing. Not enough power to do anything at all. Radio beeped to let me now it was resetting etc.

So, my question is, if garage checked that connections were all up together etc (paid for the work grumble grumble) then where do I begin?

Please treat me as a complete novice/imbecile as mechanical things I have always persevered with but electrical bits I've never had an even casual education in.

Eg: Turn wheel on multi' to the ohms sign, put the red wire on (place in engine bay) and the black wire on (place in engine bay).

My hope is to be able to rely on this as a daily again which at present I can't.

Kind thanks,

F

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by Foeux

Back sooner than anticipated...

Dear friends,

For any of you with continued interest or ideas, thank you very much.

The problem has arisen again.

Went to take car to train station after 2 days of no use and heavy rain.

Car turned engine 4 times before behaving like it was totally dead. No time to check what's going on, took another car instead, sulked moderately.

Back home today so went to do my checks. Before showing it any ignition or anything I pinged bonnet. Battery sitting at 12.29v

With multi' across battery, I turned on ignition, small drop to 11.9v which rose almost instantly to 12.27v (no lights etc).

Began to crank engine (having heard fuel pump and a relay go click as soon as ignition was turned. 12.27v dropped over 3 seconds of very slow cranking to 4.14v and then nothing. Not enough power to do anything at all. Radio beeped to let me now it was resetting etc.

So, my question is, if garage checked that connections were all up together etc (paid for the work grumble grumble) then where do I begin?

Please treat me as a complete novice/imbecile as mechanical things I have always persevered with but electrical bits I've never had an even casual education in.

Eg: Turn wheel on multi' to the ohms sign, put the red wire on (place in engine bay) and the black wire on (place in engine bay).

My hope is to be able to rely on this as a daily again which at present I can't.

Kind thanks,

F

Please post a pic of your battery showing the label(s) with as much information as possible.

[Foeux]

The battery on the car at the moment is a:

1) LUCAS LP096 12v 70AH 640A

Below are pictures of it and also the leads coming from the -ve terminal to the chassis and the one that goes off underneath.

The car has also enjoyed the following 2 batteries, both of which 'cure the problem' when used as jumper packs, both of which show the intermittent dying condition when fitted, both of which can be 'cured' with a jump.

VI_001.jpg
VI_002.jpg

2) Platinum Prestige 027 12v 60AH 570A

VI_003.jpg

3) Exide 51816427 12V 63AH 450A

VI_004.jpg

[Foeux]

Originally Posted by Laird Scooby

Please post a pic of your battery showing the label(s) with as much information as possible.

Done. Thanks.

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by Foeux

The battery on the car at the moment is a:

1) LUCAS LP096 12v 70AH 640A

Below are pictures of it and also the leads coming from the -ve terminal to the chassis and the one that goes off underneath.

The car has also enjoyed the following 2 batteries, both of which 'cure the problem' when used as jumper packs, both of which show the intermittent dying condition when fitted, both of which can be 'cured' with a jump.

Attachment 141632
Attachment 141633

2) Platinum Prestige 027 12v 60AH 570A

Attachment 141634

3) Exide 51816427 12V 63AH 450A

Attachment 141635

As i suspected, all are Calcium Technology. Switch to a normal "old skool" lead-acid battery and you'll almost certainly not have any more problems.

That said, you may have another charging problem as well but even if your charging system is spot on, many calcium/silver-calcium batteries won't charge properly on the 14V from the alternator.

[Foeux]

Originally Posted by Laird Scooby

As i suspected, all are Calcium Technology. Switch to a normal "old skool" lead-acid battery and you'll almost certainly not have any more problems.

That said, you may have another charging problem as well but even if your charging system is spot on, many calcium/silver-calcium batteries won't charge properly on the 14V from the alternator.

This AM, went to car. Would not start on its own power but with jump power from a second battery the voltage sat at 12.41v it started first turn of the key.

At idle it charges at 14.22v
Revved and held at highish RPM it charges at 14.32v

Just watched and listened for a while. Car started to stumble a bit, making the engine hesitate a bit like it was running out of fuel.

Within 5 min running on own power, engine spluttered to a stop. With ignition left on but engine dead it quickly started dropping charge at a rate of 0.01 or 0.02v a second.

Ignition off, battery back to 12.24v

Whilst I am happy to entertain the idea of a new battery, could the battery be the problem if it does it with 3 different ones?

In summary, the fault can happen when left, when running, when restarted minutes after running well, wet or dry. Something breaks periodically and is hard to pinpoint.

[griston64]

Originally Posted by Foeux

This AM, went to car. Would not start on its own power but with jump power from a second battery the voltage sat at 12.41v it started first turn of the key.

At idle it charges at 14.22v
Revved and held at highish RPM it charges at 14.32v

Just watched and listened for a while. Car started to stumble a bit, making the engine hesitate a bit like it was running out of fuel.

Within 5 min running on own power, engine spluttered to a stop. With ignition left on but engine dead it quickly started dropping charge at a rate of 0.01 or 0.02v a second.

Ignition off, battery back to 12.24v

Whilst I am happy to entertain the idea of a new battery, could the battery be the problem if it does it with 3 different ones?

In summary, the fault can happen when left, when running, when restarted minutes after running well, wet or dry. Something breaks periodically and is hard to pinpoint.

Based on that I would say it's not the battery. I have had a silver calcium battery on my 96 940 for four years and had no issues. It was secondhand as well !

[Laird Scooby]

Originally Posted by Foeux

This AM, went to car. Would not start on its own power but with jump power from a second battery the voltage sat at 12.41v it started first turn of the key.

At idle it charges at 14.22v
Revved and held at highish RPM it charges at 14.32v

Just watched and listened for a while. Car started to stumble a bit, making the engine hesitate a bit like it was running out of fuel.

Within 5 min running on own power, engine spluttered to a stop. With ignition left on but engine dead it quickly started dropping charge at a rate of 0.01 or 0.02v a second.

Ignition off, battery back to 12.24v

Whilst I am happy to entertain the idea of a new battery, could the battery be the problem if it does it with 3 different ones?

In summary, the fault can happen when left, when running, when restarted minutes after running well, wet or dry. Something breaks periodically and is hard to pinpoint.

It's almost certainly the battery, i had exactly the same problem with my 827 Sterling (although i overcame the problem by boosting the alternator charge voltage, easy with the Nippon-Denso alternator on it, not quite so easy with the alternators fitted to Volvos) and this explains the situation quite well :

https://electronics.stackexchange.co...alcium-battery

Granted there are some calcium/silver-calcium batteries around that will happily exist and perform on below-par charging systems (i.e. 14.4V max when cold) but these obviously haven't had the full dose of silver-calcium doping on the plates at manufacture. This battery should cure your problems, same as it's done on other 940s that i know of :

https://www.halfords.com/motoring/ba...ee-952465.html

Purely as a point of interest, the "Italian" battery you have among your trio of batteries isn't even big enough to cope with the standard set up on your Volvo, even if it was being charged. It's an 063 which was commonly fitted to 1600/2000 engines in other makes, just enough for 2000 most of the time and certainly ok for a 1600 but you have a bigger engine there which takes a bit more turning over.

[Foeux]

Originally Posted by griston64

Based on that I would say it's not the battery. I have had a silver calcium battery on my 96 940 for four years and had no issues. It was secondhand as well !

What checks could I do with a multimeter to see what's happening?

Originally Posted by Laird Scooby

It's almost certainly the battery, i had exactly the same problem with my 827 Sterling (although i overcame the problem by boosting the alternator charge voltage, easy with the Nippon-Denso alternator on it, not quite so easy with the alternators fitted to Volvos) and this explains the situation quite well :

https://electronics.stackexchange.co...alcium-battery

Granted there are some calcium/silver-calcium batteries around that will happily exist and perform on below-par charging systems (i.e. 14.4V max when cold) but these obviously haven't had the full dose of silver-calcium doping on the plates at manufacture. This battery should cure your problems, same as it's done on other 940s that i know of :

https://www.halfords.com/motoring/ba...ee-952465.html

Purely as a point of interest, the "Italian" battery you have among your trio of batteries isn't even big enough to cope with the standard set up on your Volvo, even if it was being charged. It's an 063 which was commonly fitted to 1600/2000 engines in other makes, just enough for 2000 most of the time and certainly ok for a 1600 but you have a bigger engine there which takes a bit more turning over.

Thanks for the tip.

The Italian battery was just one a chum had laying around that got me out of a pinch.

Before I do battery, what checks could I do with a multimeter to see what's going awry?

Thanks both,

F

[Ian21401]

Foeux,
I’ve been following this thread and it has me intrigued.
Just a few thoughts from an outsider. Feel free to ignore them if you wish.

Post #26, When you first tried the engine would not turn over. Did you check the battery voltage before you tried to start the engine? To try to establish whether the battery voltage was already too low, or 1) it suddenly dropped once the ignition was switched to position 1, or 2) it suddenly dropped when the switch was in position 2, or 3) it suddenly dropped when the starter motor was trying to turn?

Once started using a jumper battery the alternator is charging.
I understand that you then disconnected the jumper battery?
and then after a few minutes of running on it’s own battery the engine dies?

You mention that the charge rate was dropping after the engine stopped.
As the engine was now stopped there would be no charge from the alternator so, do you mean the battery voltage was dropping?

Is it possible to state what the battery voltage dropped to before you switched off the ignition?
Yet, when you switched off the ignition the battery voltage returned to 12.24 volts.
Given that the engine would not turn over when first tried this morning. Is it possible once the engine has been running then died to check the battery voltage periodically to establish at what rate the battery voltage drops?