Howdy again everyone! I'm going to try and keep this one as condensed as I can. Hopefully someone has experienced this type of issue and it all boils down to something simple. I posted a video on my YouTube (unlisted) of one of the issues at hand - although for some reason I think they are both connected. As if it's one issue causing it all - not sure though. So, the fill plug issue. The car sat without ATF for like a week. Car battery died whilst sitting, naturally, not that keeping it topped off was my #1 goal at the time. Wrapped up the whole ATF job and finally got the car into a position to get the battery jumped. Already knew I was going to need to drive the car a bit to get the battery to where it probably wanted to be. It was DEAD dead.

Battery jumped - car starts, sounds amazing, it's doing its thang, cool. Getting everything in the trunk situated and put back together - so that I can drive the car for the first time since doing everything. Automatically - something is off. Doesn't feel or sound right. And by sound, I am meaning the chime tones you will get for not having a seat belt clicked in... or if a door is open. No biggie, battery is insanely low charge and we all know these vehicles are crazy picky. Drove the car around for about an hour - high revs and all. Not only needing to charge the battery, but as I said before, it hadn't been driven in about a week so just doing it proper justice. Fast forward to the next day, the chimes are the same. My normal ding... ding... ding... sounds from having the door open or seatbelt off - are playing through the speaker as if it's a $1 Chinese ghetto speaker. I really don't know how else to describe it. The tones of the chime and the actual audio of the chimes just are majorly off. Tingy, cheap sounding, raspy, so many ways to describe it and I don't even think the video does it justice. My girlfriend wouldn't notice if I dyed my hair blue (I'm a redhead) and she instantly noticed the sounds. Now, the title of this says Audio + Chime issues. No audio out of my speakers. SINCE doing the ATF job, I have heard music come from my speakers one time. And it was WHILE I was driving. (I kept the music playing just to see what would happen.) and it kind of just turned on while I was driving down the road. Before, I have had issues with the audio cutting out while going over washboards - but this seems different. 2 Independent pieces of audio output giving garbled and rubbish results after 1 shared event. There was no bumps on the road, the music sort of just kicked on. The chime audio was gross this whole time, but still, music played, and I would have lived with it.

Here is some pertinent information that may be necessary...
I have the Tesla style android screen. It was the cause of an issue before, and totally could be the cause of an issue in the future. The only reason I am separating this screen from being the issue though - is that the CHIMES seem to be coming from a speaker that DID NOT come with the Tesla/android screen. Again, the Tesla/android screen came with a speaker plugged into the back of it that seems to be what plays system audio (not music) such as chimes or sensor beeps or whatever it may be - but I don't think I hear it playing anything. Wish I knew if it was in the first place, but either way - it's not currently. The sound seems like it is coming from a speaker of similar size, but from behind the gauge cluster. Behind the MPH/Miles/RPM gauges. It's just a chincey, cheap, broken sound. The screen works in every other way I could imagine - AC, steering wheel, internet, you name it. Just cannot hear anything. I don't think it is an optic cable issue, as I did hear music for the last 15 mins of my drive on that one day it kicked back on. Battery is at 100% charge & 14.1-14.3 volts for all of the folks that default to batteries being the issue (I know they are) I am going to plug my stock head unit back into the car and see if it changes anything and I will update this post. Figured I would throw this up on here in case anyone has experienced this!!!! Thank you all!!??



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First thing I would is disconnect the fully charged battery to do a hard reset and see if that clears the issue.

The other thing is never let the car drain the battery while it's being worked on, always connect a charger or disconnect the batt.

 

I will always be disconnecting the battery from now on! I did the hard reset - but the chime noise persists. At least I know now for 100% certainty that the audio (music) issue is not a physical cord issue - there are no damages anywhere causing the intermittence. It has either got to be Battery/Alternator/Android screen. Again, not too sure if the chime rasp and my no-show music are correlated.... but it would seem almost certain that there are different issues respective to both problems. What is the common factor between the chime and audio? The system speaker (chime noise) shouldn't be wired together or, again, correlated with my music in any way, should it? Bam, I get in the car and I have 2 new issues that are out of nowhere. Commonality, they both started happening when the battery drained. 1 of those said issues resolves itself about every 3/4 car trips. The music will work for 1 to 2 drives.... then nothing on the next 3 trips. Whole time, the chime is CONSTANTLY raspy. Typing my *** off and rambling but I am trying to PEMDAS it while I type this lol. Thinking about snagging a new battery and charging it up just to plug 'er in and see what the car thinks of it, then returning it if the issue persists. No biggie there. My current battery did pass all of the battery tests that autozone put it through. Battery 5 years old.

 

Is the chime coming from the Tesla screen or the cars own passive sounder? With the audio is it possible something (connection) behind the Tesla screen is loose - might be worth pulling it out.

 

The sound is coming from the cars own passive sound speaker thing which sounds like it is behind the instrument cluster. Definitely going to pull the screen out and reapply everything -- Although I thought it was worth mentioning (and quite strange) that... and take a mental breathe before trying to understand this: The raspy chime sound that initially starts out as a raspy chinese ghetto speaker (as stated in the post, and as captured on video in the youtube clip) stays raspy like that for maybe... 2-3 minutes, and then the sound slowly starts to morph and like... almost act like its fading out or getting weak. I don't want to make this seem like its a power issue automatically because I just really don't think it is... nothing else is acting up and I don't think it would act up in this way if it were. It's just strange how the speaker (passive car sounder) like seriously deflates itself over time from it pinging at me to put my seatbelt on. Or leaving the door open. It hasn't seemed to totally fade away in any of my drives yet though. My last 2 drives my music worked (since the battery reset) and I have not had failed music - so no that this issue was even urgent anyways, that makes it a lot more bearable. I will update the post with what happens. Thanks!!

 

Could be just coincidence with the passive sounder going on the blink - maybe something against the diaphragm/cone?

Post some pics of the disassembly and the sounder/location. I couldn't find any mention of a location in the service manwells.

 

Humor me. Disconnect the battery. After a 6 hour pause from charging or running the engine, report the actual current battery voltage.

I suspect the sound is an alarm of some type, being activated by failed communications to some component or…. Typically, the root of these cause is insufficient electrical power

 

I will check this. And If I find it, I will post a pic!

I will also do this. The car has been sitting unused for about 14 hours - but with the battery connected. Do you specifically need the cars battery to be disconnected for the 6 hours, or would current scenario work? Thanks!

Also the sound is seriously just the regular passive sounder for the car. Like when a door is open, or seatbelt unplugged while driving. That chime that plays (in every vehicle) is just raspy and starts to morph. So odd.

 

A cold battery. The car has not been running for 6 hours. The charger has not been connected for 6 hours.
Whether it is connected to the car or not is irrelevant.

The reading you took earlier is also of little consequence…. that was the “charging voltage” that you read, not the battery voltage.

All to commonly, some are running about with an incapable battery, claiming its not the battery as it was on a maintainer…
That would be a wrong hypothesis.

Once we rule out the battery, we can move forward, systematically through other relevant tests.

 

So, I was not able to get to this today. Had too many errands to do. What I will say though, which might be of your interest.. I have a ODB sensor thingy mounted to my dashboard that tells me some basic stats about the car (I guess it is an OBD2 scanner thing that cannot work with our cars (not sure when XKs got OBD2), although it does show some worthy data) such as: battery voltage, gas, GPS features, etc. and when I immediately turned the car on (just the accessory, not the engine, which does include the inside cab lights and any 12v things using battery power), the first reading I saw on the scanner was 11.8. It was fluctuating between 11.8 and 11.9. I will still do the test you described, but figured that may be something glowing to a more familiar mind.

 

At 11.anything, your battery. is significantly below spec and grossly inadequate.

Cheers.

 

5 years old, october of 19'

 

All you can do is lead the horse to water. Where is that ITBS gif when you need one??

 

Five years is getting to end of life - at that age the cranking amps will be down causing a voltage drop on cranking the engine - this can cause weird things with the XK/R electronics. Happened to me a couple of times until I replaced the battery.

 

I ended up buying the same make/model of battery from Costco ($200.54 -$15 Core) as the one that I already had in the car. About a week later, I finally found time and got around to installing it - and while the battery was most definitely not charged when I first put it in... music plays fine. I have yet to have a startup where my music isn't working. Although I do think the passive sounder might've taken some damage and/or is going out. It used to morph and make sounds while pinging as if it wasn't getting the voltage it wanted - but now it kind of sounds like it fried itself and almost 'clicks' when trying to make the sound. Frankly, it's actually not an annoying sound and is more quiet than the original pinging. So that will not go to the top of my list quite yet. Thank you everyone for every reply/comment and I will update this post if anything happens.