Passat Battery drain

[Blobnose]

Hi All

I have a problem with my 2001 Passat TDI.

After driving to and from work as usual i was unable to start
my car the next morning. I had all electrics (lights, radio etc)
but the engine just would not turn over. I called breakdown
recovery who managed to get the car started with jump leads
and i was advised to leave the engine running for 10 minutes.
To be on the safe side i left it running for about 20 minutes,
swithched the engine off only to find that it wouldnt start again.

Any advice?

Cheers

[thefoolmccool]

SOUNDS LIKE YOUR BATTERYS F*CKED!! Modern batteries give no warning of failure and cannot be "brought Back" like their ancestors.

Having said this, the battery would have to be really bad to not start the car after 20mins running.

Take it to Halfords, they do a battery test free of charge.

Hope this helps.

[Blobnose]

Thanks, i will give it a go.

[GSD]

I agree with thefoolmccool. The same thing happened to me in January when my battery failed without warning. The Green Flag man restarted the engine using a slave battery and having tested my battery he said that it should be fine if I took the car for a short run of a couple of miles or so. Indeed he said that he just couldn't justify selling a new battery to me, which seemed very open and honest.

However having done that and then switched the engine off for about half an hour I couldn't restart it and had to call the Green Flag man out again. He restarted it with the slave battery again and told me to take it straight to the nearest VW garage. They said that the battery was completely dead - it was over seven years old anyway - and charged me about £90 to replace it with a new Varta one to the full VW specification. Personally I thought that that was pretty reasonable!