fiona

Still having starting issues and still waiting to get it booked into auto electrician but decided to phone stealer today to see how much new battery is for '05 535d.

Mr Vague in service tells me I have a choice of 3:

80 amp - ?134
90 amp - ?153
110 amp - ?173

He has no idea what 535d "should" have, and as mine wouldn't start again today (supermarket delivery chap knocked the trickle charger off it last night so dead as a dodo this morning) I can't look to see what I currently have as I'm at work.

What one should I go for or is the Bosch one at Halfords tried and trusted?

TIA

Fiona

Dandle

That Bosch battery looks good. The only thing is that you will still need to go to the dealer to get the car initialized for the new battery. Unless it's exactly the same capacity and rating as the old one. You can see the old battery in the boot behind the trim panel on the r/h side, all the details should be on the top.

-Mike-

+1 for the reprogramming. I just had mine replaced under warranty this week. They used a 90A AGM style for my 06 525xi. Per the documentation they had to "program control unit", "initialize sunroof and Pwr windows", "recalibrate steering angle sensor" and then "program vehicle to accept new battery". It took a good two hours for all the reprogramming. Hope your situation gets sorted in quick order!

juliann

Hmmm, I just walked into Halfords, found a battery with the same Ah, put it in and everything worked, and still works 1 year later.

Maybe just lucky

mario.kwok

My E61 2005 535d just went dead last night and I had to jump start mine. Stealer Coventry also quoted me exactly the same price and said they don't know which battery model I need. And they've also told me it will take them half an hour to fit with a labour cost of ?51.41 where Halfords can do it for ?4.99. I just laughed......

Steve J

Hi. Fiona's hubby here.

The battery isn't knackered it's just being drained at 0.8amps as something is staying on when car locked.

Battery is a 90amp BMW one so should be adequate except when lost it's charge. For an expensive car the issues everyone is having with battery drain seems like poor design or poor componants.

Dandle

The problem is how complicated the cars are these days. Like you say if the battery is being drained at that rate something isnt shutting down when your locking the car, are you getting the " High Battery Drain While Stationary" message?

Are there any signs of things not working properly? When I had that message I had an electric window not working properly so the Body control module was replaced and later when the message was still there the rear window and parcel shelf were unlocking themselves while the car was running but stationary. They boot control module was replaced and the fault has never come back.

The other thing with cars when they are this complex is that they aren't so easy to diagnose when the fault is intermittent or not logged as a fault.

Steve J

Used to get Increased Battery Discharge warnings in the mornings and struggled to start, but don't get that warning anymore.

When battery was very low got a couple of warnings flick up. Window shut safety mechanism warning and power steering warning, though I'd guessed these were due to the battery being almost flat.

JasonH

If the battery volts drop too low:

Clock time goes to 00:00
Sunroof can need reinitialising
Windows can need reinitialising
Steering angle sensor can need reinitialising

You can set all yourself without needing any equipment.

The car does drain a lot of current, I think something like a couple of amps just with the car unlocked and the computers booting up. Even once locked it takes at least 16 mins to shutdown, can be as long as 80 mins!! You need to measure the current at this point to see if you have a current drain problem.