Battery Charge Fault & Other Strange Things

[waue1978]

Thought I'd see if anything seems familiar to anyone before the car goes in for MOT & service Friday. A couple of weeks ago the message "BATTERY CHARGE FAULT" appeared in the MFD after starting up. This was accompanied by the blower not working & the little battery symbol in the dash lighting up. A little way down the road, the battery light went out & the blower started again. When I started it a few hours later I got the warning light & message again. When I got to a roundabout half a mile away I started to brake & the brakes snatched - really snatched & felt quite fierce. Not dangerous, but noticeably more grabby than usual & it also felt almost like something small broke. After this though, the battery messages stopped (& haven't come back) & the brakes have been as normal. But there is now a noise that you can only hear from outside with the engine running & it sounds almost like there's a small piece of metal rattling around somewhere. Can't hear it from inside & the car itself is running & stopping fine.

Does this sound like anything anybody else has experienced?

[lozz]

Mine did the same thing the other day,
ithought at 1st duff alternator or something but it apears new,
idisconected the - lead off the battery left it 5 mins, put it back on and its been fine since,

ithink on mine -the problem is caused by a fault on the heater sometimes it speeds up and slows down and times itl stop and start, it must do something to the bsi,
iwill need a new blower motor me thinks,

as for rattles ive got one on the car carnt find out what it is but it sounds like a womans bracelet them with the charms rattling about very low noise but anoying as idont know what it is

[Doggy]

Be worth checking your aux. drive belt / idler / tensioner. The tensioner on my previous HDi 90 collapsed, throwing the belt and fortunately not doing anything else.

Running it up w/out the belt would eliminate a few things as the cause of the noise, too.

[waue1978]

Funnily enough, the place that's doing the Mot changed the aux belt last year when they did the cambelt. Will get them to check the aux belt tension anyway as I was getting an occasional squeal, but surely the tensioner would still be ok after less than a year & 5k miles?

[steve_earwig]

It might be a duff'un. The other stuff sounds like a bad connection somewhere...

[waue1978]

Found the problem. After paying £370 yesterday for MOT & service due to it needing a replacement rear caliper & rear pads - probably the source of the squealing noise as it was binding very badly - we've now found that the air con pump is no longer working & that's the cause of the ticking.

The guy at the garage said that it'd be a couple of hours labour & a regas & said if I could get a pump, he'd do it for £150. This is on top of the advisory for rear subframe bushes (but he did say they'll last a good while yet) & front anti-roll bar bushes. Best I can find is a place on Ebay selling new pumps for £150 - if it'll cost £150 to fit I'd rather not chance a used one.

So, depressingly, here's what she's cost in the past year in maintenance:

First MOT & service £200 - exhaust system needed.

Cambelt, water pump, aux belt, bottom pulley - £450

Second MOT & service - £370

Annoyingly though, I've now spent too much for it to be feasible to get rid of it for something else - especially since I may have the same probs all over again - but I am starting to feel like I've ended up with a bit of a money pit. & it hasn't even hit 87k yet!

[Doggy]

I think I've still go a spare compressor hanging about somewhere, (picked it up a couple of years ago in case I needed it to fix mine).
Let me know if you're interested - you can have it for whatever it costs to get it there.
It's a Sanden SD7V16, like this or this or this
Some early cars had a Delphi 1135290, (which unfortunately looks very similar).

A second thought - are you confident of their diagnosis? Could be an electrical problem stopping the clutch energising, for example. By far the most common failure seems to be leaky condensers - I'd hate you to spend that kind of money replacing the compressor, only to find you still have a leak.

Guess you don't need aircon at the mo, but is it still noisy when the aircon's off?

[lozz]

Ive Got a spare Aircon/comp too,
its off a 1999 110 hdi.

its Free if anyone wants it just pay for postage

[waue1978]

Pretty confident of the diagnosis as the guy that checked it is very good at what he does. The pump itself isn't turning at all as you can see it. The noise is still there when the air con is off, but it's not a really loud rattle, more of a slight irregular ticking. Explained to him about what happened the day I kept getting the Battery Charge Fault & when the brakes snatched & he reckoned from that something had broken inside the pump. Not very good with things like that, but I'm sure he said something about magnets & a clutch?

Thanks for the offers on the speres though, very nice of you all, but got confirmation from the seller that the £150 new one will fit my car & it comes with 1 year guarantee. When it comes to a secondhand one you could never really tell whether it could go again. Thought there'd be recon ones for sale, but didn't see any anywhere.

I know most people would probably just decide to live without the air con, but with the hot summers days I'd rather keep my little boy nice & cool when he's in the car & with the money I've spent on it, looks like I'm going to be keeping hold of the car for a long while now.

[waue1978]

Car went in this morning for a more in depth (& free) diag session as the guy that looked at it said he wanted to make sure what was wrong before I went & bought a pump.

First question was "How far do you want me to go with this?"

Basically it sounds like the pump is fine, but it's getting no power. It worked when he fed it power so I don't need a new pump, so there is some type of electrical fault somewhere in there that needs further investigating, but he suspects that it may be a control module? Also, there is a major leak somewhere in the system which will need fixing & he's told me it will need a pressure valve I think?

Don't know if this is good news or bad news. I was budgeting on £300-350 to get the pump replaced so at least I don't have a majorly expensive part to replace there, but this other stuff sounds like it could be even more expensive, although when I told him that it was quite important to me to have the air con working & that I'd been working on the assumption that I'd have to spend £350 getting the pump replaced, he didn't jump in with anything that suggested I need to save any more money up.

Does anybody know of any electrical weak points in the air con system or is it a case of being French means the WHOLE electrical system is a weak spot?

[steve_earwig]

There's always that relay in the BSI.

[waue1978]

Good call. I'll get him to check that before he goes too far into the electrical side of it. Probably going to be beginning of April now till they can get into it any more as there's only 2 guys certified to do the air con work & one of them's on hols for next 3 weeks.

[Doggy]

If you have a look through my condenser replacement HowTo viewtopic.php?f=10&t=7606&p=74908&hilit ... ser#p74908 you'll find most of the information you need.

My guess is you have a leak, (probably condenser) and therefore no residual gas pressure. This will prevent the engine ecu, (which has to 'allow' the compressor to engage), from operating the relay in the BSI to switch the compressor clutch on.

You can check if there's any gas in the system by depressing either of the test connections, (which look like tyre valves), on the pipework immediately in front of / below the battery tray.

[waue1978]

Definitely no gas left in my system as apparently it is quite a big leak I have. Said it lost 20bar (of his test stuff - think it was nitrius & something else) in less than an hour so my gas is long gone.

But very useful info there. Would never have occurred to me that a leak would stop the whole thing from working, but it would certainly explain how I seem to have 2 problems at the same time & potentially saved me a fair few quid as I was contemplating getting an auto-electrician friend to sort out the electrical problem before I booked it in to get the leak fixed. Now it seems entirely plausible that once the leak is fixed it should be working again. Although your quote of £320 to have the condensor replaced doesn't indicate that this is going to be especially cheaper than what I was originally looking at to have the pump replaced.

[Doggy]

Well, mine cost me about £150 to replace the condenser and get it re-gassed. Means rolling your sleeves up, but there's nothing too daunting there and you now know you can safely leave it until the weather's a bit better....