Battery Protection

[Ian2]

Hi,

I've had my W211 E320 cdi (2005) for a month or so now and just wanted to check something.....

About every other start, I get the following message: Battery Protection: Convienience Functions Temporarily Unavailable.

The car always starts, just things like heated seats don't work for a minute or two. Is this normal or is the battery on its way out? Wouldn't surprise me as the previous owner did very few miles so the car would have been sat a lot (he mostly just drove it to the golf club and back, ironically he had a VW Golf for everything else!)

Thanks

Ian

 

[KillerHERTZ]

That's the smaller motorbike battery on its way out IIRC

Located top right of engine bay

 

[mersum1es]

Could be small battery, but message comes from main battery under voltage. Reason may be bad battery, insufficient charging, alternator malfunction, current drain, fault in aux battery system (battery itself, isolation relay).

 

[IanA2]

Hi,

I've had my W211 E320 cdi (2005) for a month or so now and just wanted to check something.....

About every other start, I get the following message: Battery Protection: Convienience Functions Temporarily Unavailable.

The car always starts, just things like heated seats don't work for a minute or two. Is this normal or is the battery on its way out? Wouldn't surprise me as the previous owner did very few miles so the car would have been sat a lot (he mostly just drove it to the golf club and back, ironically he had a VW Golf for everything else!)

Thanks

Ian

Hook it up to a trickle charger every night or over the weekend. Should sort it out. Good and cheap from Lidl or Aldi. You've just missed Lidl but Aldi start Thursday.

See: https://www.aldi.co.uk/en/specialbuys/thursday-17th-october/

 

[John]

I had the aux replaced in mine as it was boogered and still got the message. Once I replaced the 2008 main battery, never had it since.

So it could be either battery if nothing else.

 

[Satch]

Most likely main battery is getting past it and this shows up more as temperature drops.

Big load on start up so voltage drops, glowplugs main culprit, and the battery protection is a bit twitchy anyway.

Anything you can do to reduce load helps a bit, e.g. turn off "welcome" lighting feature so car does not light up like a Christmas tree when you unlock it, do not set lights to auto etc.

 

[1945wickedred]

Hi how do you turn off the welcome feature as I would like to stop the Christmas tree effect when I unlock.

 

[John]

It is within COMAND assuming you have that.

Use the left hand steering controls and get to convenience features I think it is.

 

[SavMan]

Are you referring to the external lights if so you can normally access from the instrument cluster in settings.

 

[b1g1an]

This has got chuff all to do with the little battery, common misbelief based on how they were used in the SL...completely different system.

Mine used to do this after a few days and as I only used it at the weekends it always came on. Trickle charging kept it topped up but didn't stop it happening if I left it off for a week. I wanted one of the little Lidl or Aldi ones to hard wire in but it was the wrong time of year for them so got one of the 5A CTEKs when it was very cheap on Amazon. This has a recondition mode over and above the usual desulphation etc modes, which I don't think the lesser CTEKs have, and they recommend running it once a year on healthy batteries too. Amazingly, one run of this completely cured it and it will now sit for at least three weeks, the longest I've left it, without any charging and still start with all functions operating fully.

Don't know if I would've spent the usual £60 on one but was definitely worth the £30 I got it for. Nothing wrong with the cheaper ones that I know of, just sharing my experience of that one.

 

[Ian2]

Thanks all, good advice....

 

[V12]

I just bought one of these for my S Class, exactly the same as the re-branded Bosch one you can buy from ECP for twice the price.

Varta Silver H3 Car Battery 100AH SIZE 017/019 (5 Years Warranty) | eBay

If you use the car regularly and not just on short trips then a charge on a trickle charger will just postpone the problem, as your alternator will be doing a good job anyway.
For the sake of £85 I replaced mine before it started to get really cold and really suffer problems. Although the old battery would crank the car over fine every morning, the new battery makes the cranking sound like it's on speed. Can't believe the difference.