It's a Sunday, so the dealer is closed. My car is in my garage.... drove it last night. This morning when I tried to start it, it made a sound like it was going to try to start, but then seemed to lock up. When I retried, and trying since... It makes a whiney sound like it wants to start, but there is no evidence the engine gets involved. The sound won't stop and after several seconds I stop it by taking my foot off the break and hitting the Start Button again. The oil level seems slightly below mid. Based on AC working, radio... other power items, the battery SEEMS to be fine. But I notice that when I go to try to start it now, the break won't depress normally.

Should I try jumping it anyways? Is there anything else I can check? I'm not a skilled car guy, so any advice is much appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

 

I'm getting 11.95 Volts with a multi-meter, and I see notes on the forums here about Jags being picky about having a full battery. So I'm attaching a smart battery charger to it for a while to see if I can get it up to 12.5 Volts.

In the meantime, I still welcome any advice.

The battery label shows it has 155 reserve capacity fwiw.

 

Yeah 11.xx is pretty low for any battery. Charge it like you said and give it a try before jumping it. If it starts, use your multi-meter while it's running and see if you get a mid 14 voltage reading, which shows if your alternator is charging correctly.

 

Just follow-up:

I tried jumping it with a Nissan Pathfinder. No luck, though it sounded like it got closer.

So next I charged with the smart battery charger. I was optimistic... The battery worked up to 12.5 Volts... The smart charger showed 25% and over the course of many hours worked on up to 100% with a green light (measuring 12.55 Volts at peak charge). I thought for sure I'd get it going. But alas, no. I tried to start this morning and no luck. Measuring the battery immediately after trying to start, it showed 12.3V.

So I ended up calling USAA and they sent a tow truck. The tow truck guy laughed at me trying to use the smart charger. Then he was going to laugh that I didn't have a Jaguar battery... but I told him the car came to me that way. He said Jags and Cadillacs are very hard to jump using other cars. He plugged in this fancy smart cable thing (I forget what he called it). He said it turns off the car computer until the engine starts, then starts the car computer. And he says he jumps buses and the like with it. Needless to say, the Jaguar started right up and I drove to the dealer. Planning to get an expensive Jaguar-branded battery. *sigh* And my 80,000 mile check-up, so December is going to hurt $$$-wise.

 

My car was in my garage... Was kind of convenient battery was in the trunk in the end. But if it had to be towed, the question was how to get it into neutral. And FYI, there is a manual way to do it you can find online. (Pop the trim by your center console storage, use a coin to unlock the lever... press the break while pulling up on the orange strap.)

 

Batteries are batteries. Usually OEM are just your standard brands out there, just re-labeled for a particular company. BMW does the same. Dealer charges $500-600 to install and register a battery with the computer, I did mine in the Advance Auto parking lot for $130.

How long did you let it charge while having it jumped from the Pathfinder? I'd wager that had you left it for a good 5-10 minutes, it would have jumped off. If not, then the next step is take your battery out and have it load tested at your nearest parts store. The driver is right in that a smart charger won't help charge a battery that has died, and although it shows a decent voltage, doesn't mean it's still good. He's wrong in that a car's computer uses alot of juice. It is miniscule compared to the draw of other parts when starting.

 

Keep in mind that a 12 V battery that is at 12.0 volts is essentially dead. If you put a 12 V battery on a smart charger it will charge it to 14.5 volts before its 100% full. A bettery at 12.3V will have just enough charge left in it to start a car. We sell 100's of batteries at our shop every year and I have had many discussions about batteries with our suppliers. We have cut outs in our trucks that shut off all power to the trucks at 12.3 V so that it leaves them a little reserve to start the trucks. Also before you boost a battery check to see of you have an AGM battery or a regular lead acid battery. The AGM batteries do NOT respond well to a fast boost. They will not take a fast charge so if you have a dead AGM battery you need to hook it up for a long time to get much of a charge in it. We have to buy special chargers to charge our AGM batteries and to be honest in our climate the AGM batteries are terrible as we need to be able to fast charge the trucks so we do not bring in any AGM batteries anymore. I would never have one in any of my vehicles in our climate just for that reason. The best thing you can do for your battery is buy a floating charger but not one that will only give out 1.5 or 2 amps. It needs to be one that will vary the rate of charge in order to work properly. If you are storing a car for a long period of time then its fine to use the small 1.5 amp floating chargers BUT you need to make sure the battery is at 100% charge before you store it. I have 4 cars in storage as well as a boat for the winter and I leave all the batteries in them but they are all on floating chargers and I check them every once in a while just to make sure they are working. I have batteries that are 6 years old and still test as new. They will last a long time if taken care of.

As for going to Jag and spending $600.00 on a " Jag " battery please dont be fooled. They are no better than going to Costco or wherever and buying the proper size for the car. Save the cash for something else and dont let the service guys try to sell you on their battery being specially designed for their cars. Thats BS. Get the highest CCA rating you can find. If you can get one over 1000 CCA then thats what you want. Especially if you live in colder climates. Hopefully this helps a few people.

 

Hi all... I really appreciate the info. Good read.

An update: The dealership tested the battery and, believe it or not, said it was fine and not to replace it. I questioned them and they said it tested out, showed me the print-out, and claimed to have calibrated the battery monitor. They couldn't explain why it didn't start. (I asked, and they said the battery monitor may not have been calibrated previously, but didn't draw any conclusion from that and I don't know what that might do.)

So while I didn't buy a new battery, I did have to pay over $800 for the 80,000 mile service.

My only theory as to why it may not have started.... The tow truck driver said, as it started up, smells like it was flooded, too. And it did give off a lot of fumes. The night before it died, I had moved the car back about 10 feet to get into my attic, then moved it 10 feet all the way back into the garage. Whenever I start this beast, it roars to life and wants to fly out of the garage. I have to have the brake on pretty well as I back up or I'll drive into the neighbor's house across the cul-de-sac. That implies to me, a lot of gas might be sent to the engine on start up. When I only backed up 10 feet one way and 10 feet back without running the car very long, maybe I flooded the engine and it needed extra juice to get going.

Just a theory. Can't think of what else may have kept it from starting.

 

I think the tow truck's driver's theory about the car computer was less about its draw on the electrical system, and more about the computer misinterpreting data and controlling the engine badly.

 

As for getting the car out of park I think there is a small panel in front of the console glove box that is removed and there is a lever to handle this situation.

 

If you do replace the battery make sure it's the proper one and has a vent. Make sure the vent tube is hooked up.

Other than that it's just a standard battery.
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Wrong….wrong…..wrong…..hard experience told me that the Interstate batteries that the dealers are obligated to use are NOT up to the electrical demands of these cars. If you look at the RESERVE capacity of the battery you will find that at least two on the market have a reserve of 170 Ahr and these work so well that most of the "gremlin" episodes vanish (electrically related). My car has never performed better since I personally replaced the second damn dealer battery. Most of these batteries have two vents at either end and only one can take that little venting tube that is available in the trunk. No big deal.

 

Nissan / Infiniti batteries, at least with the 4-5 I've had to replace over the years,every one failed at 2.25 to 2.5 years, on the dot. Sometimes without warning, leaving us stranded. Complete junk.

 

Do you know if you've still got the original battery from 2009? If so, I'd personally change it anyway. So many posts on this forum about how sensitive these cars are to low batteries - and going into the winter when you put a lot more demand from seat heaters, lights etc. As several people said above, you can get great batteries at good prices from many other stores - I'd find the right one and install it now to pre-empt any further issues.

 

I've seen this behavior before on a number of AJ8 equipped Jaguars. The OP stated that they started the car and moved it a few feet. In my experience, after doing this, the cars were typically hard to start and on a couple of occasions the car produced lots of smoke. I now make a habit of not just starting and stopping a V8 Jaguar....