A4 2006 3.0 tdi quattro battery removal.

[mhobson]

Hello, Never in my life before have I ever encountered issues trying to remove a car battery, today all that has changed. Whilst parked in the garage a dormouse has got into the engine bay and built a nest behind the battery, now the fragrant odour of dormouse urine permeates the car through the A/C, so it has to be driven in recirculating mode. So today the plan was to remove the battery, then the nest, clean the mess and odour away and put it all back in order. I thought maybe half an hour or so. An hour and a half later the battery is still there. To avoid code losses I have connected the positive and negative battery clamps to another battery which is on constant charge, removed the little gas escape pipe then disconnected the battery retaining clamp. The problem is that there is a steel support bar going from left to right which gets in the way of removing the battery clamp, with difficulty I have removed the support bar bolts, but it will not budge. If I cannot get the battery clamp out it restricts the battery movement and ability to remove it. I am just stuck. It is the same battery when we bought the car in 2010, so I suppose that is a positive, but then maybe I should change it, if I ever get it out, but it has always worked well.

[mhobson]

Managed to pull the battery out by brute force but am worried how I will get the securing plate and bolt back into that space, when I try to refit the battery

[mhobson]

I left out that it was a 2006 a4 cabriolet! It seems that crossways bar does not exist on other models

[Crasher]

Yes, only the cabrio and I think an RS model have the brace. The battery clamp 8E0 803 123 C should have a long handle on it. I have a 1.8T 2006 8H in today for a few jobs, new victim sorry, customer.

[mhobson]

Yes it was easy to find the long handle on the battery clamp, I wiggled and twisted it for ages, but the clamp would not rise past the steel brace, it seemed obvious that I needed to remove the brace first, which is why I spent so much time on it, in the end I left it there, just brought it as far forward as possible under the steel brace, then twisted the battery forward and pulled the battery up and out, it went in OK. My fault for trying for so long to get the clamp out when in fact it was not necessary, DUH!!