Battery recharge E70

[TLR_Thumper]

Hello all,

Oh talk about performance anxiety posted this in the E53 forum by mistake doh!!!

I have owned my 2009 E70 M Sport for about 2 years now and absolutely love it but my ownership has not been without issue!! The current one that is annoying me the most is high battery drain now I have been reading through most of the threads regarding high battery drain and understand that my battery maybe toast as it has been deeply discharged and the X has been throwing quit a few high battery drain messages recently. It has also been telling me that my battery voltage is very low as I can't have the radio on for more than 30 seconds without the engine running before the battery icon flashes up.

Ok the poor thing doesn't get driven all that much and there are far too many short journeys when it does so in reality I can understand why it's complaining! So what want to know is how I go about charging the battery!! From what I have read you should charge the battery from the jumping points under the bonnet but when I have tried this my charger tells me that the battery is fully charged after 15 minutes. Ok this could be the charger I am using too me it seems like the car goes to sleep and my charger then stops trying to charge the battery now one of my questions is should I Just connect the charger directly to the battery? Would this make any difference? Would it cause any issues with the IBS?

Actually what I think I really want to know is can i just take battery out of the car and hook it up to a charger leave it for several hours?? What error messages will the car throw up after this?

btw I went a mates house the other day and used his multimeter on the battery and it showed  11.8v so 0% charge so that's a pretty dead battery to me.

Please help

Cam

[X5Sport]

You can charge it on the car using the under bonnet jumper points - the BMW preferred option.

2009 means a 6 year old battery - which means it's most likely in need of replacement.  You cannot 'swap' the battery as the on board charging system is 'intelligent' and changes over time to adapt to the battery condition.  You need to put a new battery on and then tell the car it has a new battery.  This needs to be done by a BMW Dealer, or someone with access to the right software (non BMW garages are unlikely to have it), or by a Carly adapted device and App (Android or IOS) and DIY it.

If you don't then the charging system will wreck the new battery within a year or so (possibly less) by overcharging it.

An typical E70 will draw up to 60A doing nothing!  The battery will only give about 20 mins of service without the engine, then everything shuts down.  And that is with a brand new one!  One engine start needs 20mins of running to recover the energy into the battery again.

If you are doing short journeys then get a CTEK conditioner (MXS5.0 should do it), charger extension lead and a set of CTEK comfort connectors that go onto the charging points.  That way you can keep the charger in the dry, run a long lead under the bonnet and leave the car locked, safe and charging.

[TLR_Thumper]

X5SPort - many thanks for the reply whilst I appreciate that I do need a new battery plus the subsequent coding/reprogramming I am trying to clutch at a potential last straw and recharge the battery before going to the local Indy and handing over a few hundred good pounds.

Could you please answer this can I take the battery out of the car and charge it without fear of the car going into meltdown when I put the battery back in? I am usually a pretty confident  when it comes to cars and motorcycles mechanics  but for some unknown reason this BMW has me running for the hills everytime anything goes wrong with it.

Cheers
Cam

[lezmtaylor]

I am not trying to hijack this post, but does the trip to the dealer to reprogram the new battery apply to a 2002 4.4 E53 as well ??

Lez

[TLR_Thumper]

Lez as far as I am aware the E53 doesn't need to have a replacement battery registered/coded.

[X5Sport]

Les - E70 onwards.  I think it applies to all cars with MOST bus architecture rather than what's on the E53 (CANBUS only I think)

You should be able to remove the battery without any issues.  As long as you do the disconnect/reconnects properly all should be fine.