So my uncle left the door open on my Jag the other day and the battery died. I jumped it and it started right up. It's idling rough so I got an ODB 2 scanner and was going to scan to see if it's the ignition coil. I came back home today and of course the battery was completely dead. I got my grandpas charger and trickle charged it for a few hours. I pressed the inertia switch as well. Now it's just clicking on crank though :/ Is it possible the charger caused some sort of bigger issue?

 

Pull the battery and take to an autozone or place that tests batteries.

My guess is the total discharge killed the battery.

 

I'm beginning to think the same thing. I pulled it after hours of messing with it and will be taking it tomorrow for testing. I'll report back what I find tomorrow

 

Yes a bad charger will possibly damage the systems . Look for a wiggling needle in the cars battery gauge . Dirty electricity will corrupt the data bus as it is a digital signal in the ECU and OBD 2 . I'm on my 4th battery charger and 2nd battery in a very short period . Inertia switch does not always manually reset and can be jumped around with a paperclip across the 2 white wire sockets and connector left hanging . I'll have to double check the wires as it does work . It can also go bad as you reset a untripped one .

Square the battery first and access the electrical system test later .

Below 11.5 volts the ECU acts up so look at the voltage

Do you have strong headlights indicating good battery current

Remove the battery terminals if issues not corrected as it may drain again so you don't have a long recharge time .

Putting the battery in backward is a easy and bad thing but recoverable as I have done it myself when frustrated .

 

A trickle charger , charging for a few hours ? , will not charge a totally flat battery enough to start the car .Personally I always disconnect the negative terminal whilst charging. Hope you didn't buy a battery you didn't need.

 

Well first I tried the 10 amp rapid charge. But good news, after letting it charge all night at 10 amps it fired up. Bad news, well I sort of knew the engine was misfiring. I just ran my code scanner and got all the codes.


Or if its cat damage I'm wondering if when the car was moved to my house, I have this crazy steep driveway where cars bottom out. It could have been damaged on entry :/ My LS460L bottoms out unless you come in at the right angle.

P0300
P0305
P1316
P1314
P1313



Pending

B30f4
P13b0
P1314



I'm going to try and look under the car now for any driveway damage

 

Set the codes aside for now and ensure you have a fully charged battery and run the car as a full drive cycle afterwich clear the codes then see later if they reappear after a couple more drive cycles . A bad battery charger as one mode of failure will not fully charge and cut out undervoltage ( 10.5 volts ) like my 3rd charger .

http://www.jagrepair.com/images/Trai...20-%202000.pdf

Codes are on page 110 . Notethere are 2 sets one for the early 1995 models as the bugs were worked out in the new OBD 2 system

 

Thanks for the pdf, well the car is idling so rough I wasn't sure about driving it. I'm thinking to at least pop the spark plugs and check them. For all I know they could be the originals.

 

Yours is a late model AJ16 engine . Do you have full voltage ? Sensitive to plugs and the preferred by Jaguar TSB is Champion RS12YC

 

The battery Guage inside the car shows just over 12 volts so I believe the battery is back to where it should be.

 

A fully charged Battery is 12.77 and can be verified by pulling a post and look at with a digital meter but then the gauge is very accurate on mine . Is it a large A8 sized battery as they like them best .What we are dealing with your car is a foundation of what your engines needs (electricity ) and will look at the regulation after that .

 

I pulled plug #5 they are the champion plugs. What do you think

 

Just finished replacing the plugs with NGK's and it fired right up silky smooth. Later on today I am going to attempt to get it out of my insanely steep driveway and take it for a spin. I cleared the codes, crossing my fingers they don't come back


Thanks for all the help

 

Nice valve cover . There is a Jaguar TSB bringing the gap out to 0.040 from the original 0.035 and it is my opinion that this was to reduce the current flow through the coils so they would run cooler and have a longer service life . You can bring them back down and hit the tip with a wire brush . Tip color is not to obvious that I can see . You have some corona going on at the white ceramic .Others recommend sticking with the coil brand in hand ( pun intended ) and a I recommend lower gap can compensate for a weak coil (s ) . My plugs were probably around 80 K miles old and looked like no metal left on the tip . Watch that voltage gauge very accurately and note it as you run it .

 

Yea I read all the convos about plugs here and I figured this car is only going to be driven on Sundays as my Highlander and LS460 are my main vehicles. Plus I work from home so all the cars are barely driven to be honest. Once I have time to dig around my grandpas garage, hopefully I can find the folder of records he got from the old couple we got the car from.

 

This is a bit of an after thought , when jump starting ( if you need too again)Jaguar recommend putting the negative clamp on the boot lock catch not directly on the battery . I believe this is to protect the electronics . Good to hear you are getting there .

 

My opinion is that this is from legal to prevent a spark from igniting the battery off gassing during charging / clamping activity . There is no filter effect between the boot lock catch and the negative post . On airliners there are bus protection units as they talk to each other and command open isolation breakers from other generators ( 4 and above ) and ground power sources ( as the busses are tied together ) to keep dirty electricity from damaging the aircraft in flight and an the ground . This saved the Qantas Airbus A380, Nancy-Bird Walton QF32 . Doesn't always work . Someone flashed alot of things on 3 aircraft this way by going down the line with the same bad ground power unit . Flew to the outstation and got 2 of 3 going for the morning flights . Busy night . Good times , Good times .

 

So I got the car out of the garage, washed it, ran my clay bar over it. Moved it backed in the garage then tried to fire it up again and nothing. Pulled the battery again and it was at like 50% charge, even though this morning after the over night charge it showed 100%. Ended up leaving interstatebatteries a message. Hopefully I can get it replaced this weekend so I can finally take it for a spin around town with the dogs.

 

Did you watch the voltage needle from start to finish on your engine run ? By no start do you mean no starter rotation or it wouldn't light off ? Although today's batteries are junk you can see if the Alternator is charging correctly if you see 13.7 to 14.5 on the positive post on the battery as you do an engine run . This is little bit above the batteries full charge state of 12.77

Aside from a bad battery , if you never ran the engine after the 100 % charge and 50 % reading later we'll look at a thing referred to as parasitic drain as the car has not gone to sleep after your last engine run .

Have them put the battery on a charge / load tester to verify that it is or is not bad . Takes about an hour to do it on the proper equipment .

Battery clamps stretch over time and can be feild repaired by placing some short pieces of copper wire in the terminal post gap .

 

I picked up one of these to keep track of my batteries...

https://www.harborfreight.com/100-am...ter-61747.html