05 STS battery...again

[kevm14]

Yeah so 2 years ago I did a battery. It was an Auto Craft Gold from Advance Auto. Group 101. Got a decent online discount. Made in Saudi Arabia. Here is a link to those posts in the general thread:
viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2474&p=14095#p14093

Anyway, it failed. Seems like an internal short in one of the cells based on symptoms. I caught it just in time. Over the last couple of days the voltage dropped to like 8V. Wouldn't even pop the front door solenoids. Had to open the rear doors and open the front door from the inside.

To make this job more fun I wanted to set up some kind of 12V to the car so when I removed the battery the car would maintain power, to avoid losing the clock due to that GPS firmware bug in these Denso units. With the battery as low as it was I was nervous. Here is what I ended up rigging up. This is hilarious by the way.

First I drove the Deutz over since that has an actual car battery. I connected jumper cables and the battery charger to it just in case. It was pretty topped off which is great news in general for tractor usage. A Li-Poly jump pack would be way more convenient but this is a cool mobile jump start unit for my property I guess.

Now check out what I did on the car side.

For a ground I ended up going on one of the front suspension bolts. It worked nicely with the jaws of my jumper cables. For 12V I had a more difficult time finding something. I removed the fuse/relay box cover and ended up backing off the nut to the main feed and jammed a wire under the nut and tightening that down. This would back feed the whole car. And guess what? This worked great. With the charger on the lawn tractor this maintained a nice 13V on the car. I was able to open the front doors and stuff like that. Obviously high current would not work but it did the job.

So after that was all setup I could disconnect and remove the old battery. That is when I noticed this. Look at that goddamn date. 3/15?? This battery was almost 2-1/2 years old when I put it in!! That couldn't have helped longevity. I did not know to check this when I bought this battery (I got smarter on the group 78 AGM in the V which was a recent date code).

And this is where the story turns into even more of a circus. I went to Advance in NK, plopped the battery down and was like...look up my shit, I don't have my receipt. They said they needed an order number. OK that's lame (database + internet = this should not be a problem) but fortunately that battery was an online purchase so I was able to find the order number quickly in my e-mail. Then the inexperienced kid ended up writing it up as a refund...I'm like, no, give me a new battery, I don't want to buy a new one at whatever non-discounted price that might be. Then one guy was like...well that is pro-rated, not full replacement. I'm like, negative boss. And I showed him the 3 year right in the e-mail. So he goes and gets their one Group 101 in the back, brings it out and I'm like, so I need you to check the date code because clearly this one was old when I bought it and I don't want that again. No sticker. So he says, hey I can throw our battery tester on it and see what condition it is in. Great idea.

So he hooks it up. Thing is reading 9V. Unbelievable. He says I am sure as hell not selling this battery, I agree this is BS. Closest Advance that actually has one was in Providence. He calls them and says, I can send a driver right now and have this in our store within an hour and a half or so. I said that sounds great, call me. I was like...wait what is the date code on that one? 3/19. YES.

They call me back later and I go to pick it up. True to their word, 3/19.

I put the new one on the charger and it was already at 13V before too much time has passed so I think this is good. I do recall from last time that it needed quite a bit of charging and that was certainly a sign. I hope this goes at least 3 or 4 years then I will probably switch to AGM if I still have the car.

Oh, and bonus - the time was perfect on the nav when I was done. So my trick worked!! Not that I should have to do it but it's not like being resourceful isn't useful when you own used cars...

Also I got a refund for the old battery. If they don't catch that then I literally just got a free battery.

[kevm14]

When I scanned the car with my Tech 2 as posted in a couple other threads, one of the codes was this:

This probably set when the battery was down to 8V or whatever. It probably set when I was in accessory with Bob playing music. There's a code for everything. I reset it since this problem has already been fixed.

[kevm14]

So something doesn't seem quite right. It's barely been 6 months. The starter has been cranking more slowly than I think it should for even a couple months at this point, which is ridiculous for how new and fancy this battery is. I checked the voltage on like Sunday maybe after a day or two of sitting and it was like 12.3V or so. That seems low to me. I drove to work this morning and I watched charging voltage. Before I got to work it was already tapering off from the initial ~14.8V down to under 14V indicating that the car thought the battery was reaching fully charged. Yet, I shut the car off, and pressed ignition on (so headlights and stuff, admittedly), and the voltage was already like 12.3, then 12.2 and I think I saw 12.1V in the 20 seconds I let it do that.

So either the battery capacity is already failing, or perhaps I have a draw which results in it not properly charging back up. I checked all fuses in the engine bay fuse/relay box. Not a single one had a voltage drop over 0.05mV. According to the table I was looking for something in the ~0.3mV range to get excited. I should check the fuses under the rear seat but don't feel like it at this time.

I could also obtain my meter and try clamping a battery cable and seeing if I can see any draw there.

I started focusing on this because of what Ed has been getting into, as well as a Cadillac forum member who has a draw. Apparently the Bose amp is known to "go bad" and start being a parasitic draw. Aside from being extra fancy due to 15 speakers (that may be 15 discrete channels of amplification by the way), it also has an unrelated module that handles stuff pertaining to like memory seats or something. I guess whatever that module is can go bad and cause a draw.

Apparently this is well known, but the guy presenting with a draw already replaced the amp and still has an issue so he's trying to isolate it. My question is, what symptoms typically present with an amp issue like that? Do I lose audio? Do I lose some memory seat functions or something? All of that seems to work at this time though it makes me think about that weird hissing issue I thought was a fuel pump...

Then I think back to when I tried to play music when Bob was visiting and the system went down to 8V. I never disconnected power, and that's because I was trying to keep the nav system on standby so I didn't lose my clock. Now that I updated the firmware, I feel like what I ought to do is just kill power to the entire car for a while and let everything reset. It is possible the mystery draw could just go away after that. Seems like something I should try...

[Fast_Ed]

So GM updated the nav firmware and you don't have to worry about the date thing anymore? Not bad for a 14(?) year old car..

Is the fuse for the amp one of those under the rear seat? Can't you just test the draw for the amp?

[kevm14]

Actually it was Denso who updated the firmware. It does not appear that GM had a whole lot to do with it. For their part, they have issued and updated TSBs on the issue (for all of the vehicle lines it impacts, it is more than just the STS), as well as hosted the firmware on their tech website (the link to which is publicly accessible for some reason and where I got the files). The issue there, which is in my other thread, is Denso finally came through with updates to the 08 cars as well as 09-11 (two different firmwares). However, the 05-07 people were SOL. However, some desperate soul finally just tried the 08 file on their 05s, 06s and 07s and discovered that it actually works, but the cost is you lose the voice activation (which didn't really work) and maybe next track on the steering wheel or something. Not much of a downside.

So I applied the fix designated for 2008 cars only to my 05 and it worked perfectly. The good news for owners is, I would imagine that dealer service departments will just have a couple of these CDs and handle it pretty quickly. Whether there is an hour of labor assessed or done free, I have no idea, but I did it myself - just have to be able to burn a file to a CD-R. Not too difficult...and yeah now my clock should be able to sync to GPS since it knows about the epoch rollover and whatever that whole business was. People who had no clock often had no GPS lock so their nav became useless or would take forever to get a lock each ignition cycle (cold start?). Mine seemed fine but I also didn't lose my clock since I never disconnected power since finding out about this issue. The system also has a dead reckoning capability which, as you would know, marries the compass direction with vehicle speed and can handle some GPS interruptions that way (by design).

I think the fuse is under the rear seat, yeah. There are no tools required but the last time I removed the rear seat cushion it was quite an undertaking. Lots of sweat...

I would just test those fuses, particularly the amp fuse. I'd have to do so with the doors closed and make sure everything had gone to sleep. Maybe even lock myself in with the fob to encourage sleep if that makes a difference. That's why clamping the battery positive cable with my meter would be an easy first step. Just clamp it, wake the car up, let it go to sleep, and just monitor current draw over that cycle and see if it ever goes down to an acceptable level (which may be in the FSM?).

I'd be interested to see what Adam's battery tester says about my battery when disconnected from the car. I think stuff like this is why these cars are known to be hard on batteries. The repeated discharges eventually harm them, and once they get below some critical level of reserve capacity, they "fail" but in reality they've been slowly failing the entire time.

I wonder if the smart charging system is also part of the issue. Like, it monitors battery current but I don't see how or why it would monitor with the vehicle off (insert joke here about the off state monitoring causing a draw). There isn't supposed to be an unacceptable parasitic drain in the first place. So if there is an "offline" draw, is it possible the battery is not getting fully recharged because the computer thinks it wasn't that far discharged (SoC estimation)? I wish I knew what the strategy was. It could simply measure current into the battery and looking at alternator output voltage, it would be able to see what state the battery was in. I.e. if it is accepting a bunch of current at 14.5V, it is probably at a lower SoC, and when the current begins tapering off, that's because the SoC is nearly full capacity. So if it did that, it shouldn't matter if there is an offline discharge, because the charge strategy should be more or less exactly what my Battery Tender does. All it knows is voltage and current into the battery and it can detect battery state from there and charge accordingly.

I have an AGM battery by the way, which I guess should be a little more tolerant to this kind of thing, but unlike BMWs and probably other German cars, there is no AGM setting for the car - it treats it like a generic lead acid.

[kevm14]

I had a brainwave.

You know what probably happens every single time I shut the car off? The air leveling compressor exhaust solenoid draws current continuously until the 2 or 4 minute timer (whatever it is) shuts it off. This is because the shocks ride a little higher than they should because the system doesn't vent efficiently so it always thinks the rear is too high, unless the car has some weight in it. I wonder if this could be a factor, after every single ignition cycle.

I just checked voltage tonight. Engine bay was still hot. 12.6xx. Put the Battery Tender on it. It should be able to fully charge by morning so we'll see what happens.

Another test would be to charge with the Battery Tender on a Friday, and check the battery on a Sunday or something. If it doesn't draw when just sitting, that should validate my air leveling compressor theory because it wouldn't have cycled if I didn't use the car.

Believe it or not there is actually something I can do about this (no, not unplug the compressor). I can recalibrate the ride height in the rear with the Tech 2 so the system doesn't keep trying to lower it. I know I set it a long while back with zero air in the system. So...there's an idea, eh?

[kevm14]

Went out to car this morning. Pulled door handle halfway to unlock car and disarm alarm even though I left the hood cracked and the hood sensor was already disengaged I think (but just in case - don't need the horn blaring at 5:50am). Looked at charger....solid red light. Oh? Expected fully charged.

Measured battery voltage. It was around 13.2V but as I was probing it, I heard some relays click and definitely heard the air leveling pump exhaust solenoid click off. As soon as that happened the voltage started rising like 0.1V per second until it reached like 14.8V. Then it stopped climbing. I looked at the Battery Tender and sure enough it switched to the next charging mode. So I'm guessing simply waking the car drew so much current and pulled the battery down enough that the charger re-entered bulk charging mode. I think the battery had fully charged. I should have checked the lights before touching the car. But what this means is the car has enough current draw when woken up that it is more than the Battery Tender can handle (which is only 1.25A) but that's even with the battery buffering the draw. Also, I simply closed the hood and because of that state change (hood sensor), I heard the air compressor exhaust solenoid click again. It is perpetually trying to lower the rear of the car.

Side note, I opened the door on the CTS-V to switch insurance cards on Sunday. The charger never left the green light mode.

Anyway, once I realized the battery had probably fully charged, I removed the charger and measured the resting voltage for a bit. It was at like 13.2V and slowly falling which is normal. If I had more time I would have just sat there to see what it would settle out at.

Instead I had to go to work. So I put all that stuff away and drove to work. It cranked at the PROPER speed unlike what it has been doing, for what that's worth. Seems the car is not keeping it properly charged but, that could also mean there is a draw...

Immediately upon starting the voltage was at 12.9V and just sat there. It took a minute or two of driving for it even to climb to 13.3V. On the entire drive it was at 13.3-13.4V. So it most likely knew the battery was fully charged due to the little current it was probably accepting. This all seems normal.

Got to work, shut off car, turned ignition back on. So, headlights, nav, HVAC fan, lots of other electrical loads. It basically fell immediately to 12.2V, which isn't that different from where it sat the other morning. I don't know what this means. There is a load so this is probably expected. It could probably stay above 12V longer after being fully charged than the lowered state of charge it was at the other day but without doing any experiment I have no data on that.

Results? Mostly inconclusive but I did confirm that the battery is not fully charged based on cranking normally after charging it with my tender.

I really need to go after this theroetical drain and see if there is anything going on there. If I could reach the plug for the air compressor, I could just unplug it and see if any of these symptoms stop. Or the super lazy and complicated way, reset the rear level to what it is now which most likely will stop the exhaust solenoid from running until time out. I probably need to do that anyway.

[kevm14]

Thinking more about the symptoms...

After being driven, it always cranks great warm. That's not THAT good of a data point because engines are easier to crank when warm anyway. But it sort of lends credence to the idea that the car DOES charge the battery, and it's just that there is a draw pulling it back down.

Again, the experiment there would be to fully charge it and let it sit a few days without touching/waking anything and see what the voltage falls to. I'd probably try to use my meter to measure current on one of the main battery cables through that process. Not ready to pull the rear seat cushion yet. But if the voltage hangs in there then the conclusion would be that there are draws after shutdown (air compressor exhaust solenoid running to time out, 15 seconds of headlights, and whatever other systems are active for a few minutes). I kind of hope it's just the air compressor solenoid running to timeout.

[kevm14]

Seemed to crank fine going to lunch and again coming back. However the computer is not actively charging the battery. It pretty much sits at 12.9-13.1 or something. So it does seem like the charging behavior is less than ideal (i.e. too smart, or not smart enough). It thinks the battery is fully charged, obviously. It's not an alternator issue.

It would be interesting if there is actually an issue with the inductive current clamp that's on the negative cable and is somehow misreporting and causing the system to under-charge the battery.

Maybe I can get the Tech 2 to spit out battery current.

Or I could just replace it:
1st design, FOR VEH WITH 10V SUPPLY FROM BCM, $14.65: https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.ph ... cc=1430942
2nd design, FOR VEH WITH 5V SUPPLY FROM BCM, $11.15: https://www.rockauto.com/en/moreinfo.ph ... 58&jsn=458

Well that's hilariously cheap. Here is the application list. It is....broad.

1st design:

BUICK ALLURE 2005-2010
BUICK ENCLAVE 2008-2011
BUICK LACROSSE 2005-2011
BUICK LUCERNE 2006-2011
BUICK REGAL 2011
BUICK TERRAZA 2005-2007
CADILLAC CTS 2008-2011
CADILLAC DTS 2006-2011
CADILLAC ESCALADE 2007-2011
CADILLAC SRX 2005-2011
CADILLAC STS 2005-2011
CHEVROLET AVALANCHE 2007-2011
CHEVROLET CAMARO 2010-2011
CHEVROLET CAPRICE 2011
CHEVROLET COBALT 2005-2010
CHEVROLET CRUZE 2011
CHEVROLET EQUINOX 2007-2010
CHEVROLET EXPRESS 1500 2009-2011
CHEVROLET HHR 2006-2011
CHEVROLET IMPALA 2006-2011
CHEVROLET MALIBU 2008-2011
CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO 2006-2007
CHEVROLET SILVERADO 1500 2007-2011
CHEVROLET SUBURBAN 1500 2007-2011
CHEVROLET SUBURBAN 2500 2011
CHEVROLET TAHOE 2007-2011
CHEVROLET TRAVERSE 2009-2011
CHEVROLET UPLANDER 2005-2009
GMC ACADIA 2007-2011
GMC SAVANA 1500 2009-2011
GMC SIERRA 1500 2007-2011
GMC TERRAIN 2010
GMC YUKON 2007-2011
GMC YUKON XL 1500 2007-2011
HUMMER H2 2008-2009
PONTIAC G5 2007-2010
PONTIAC G6 2008-2010
PONTIAC GRAND PRIX 2005-2008
PONTIAC MONTANA 2005-2009
PONTIAC PURSUIT 2005-2006
PONTIAC TORRENT 2007-2009
SAAB 9-4X 2011
SATURN AURA 2007-2009
SATURN OUTLOOK 2007-2010
SATURN RELAY 2005-2007
SATURN VUE 2008-2010
SUZUKI XL-7 2007-2009

2nd design, with a warning I've never seen before, "Results may be incomplete due to size of result set:"

BUICK ALLURE 2005-2010
BUICK CASCADA 2016-2019
BUICK ENCLAVE 2008-2015
BUICK ENCORE 2013-2019
BUICK LACROSSE 2005-2019
BUICK LUCERNE 2007-2011
BUICK REGAL 2011-2017
BUICK TERRAZA 2006-2007
BUICK VERANO 2012-2016
CADILLAC ATS 2013-2018
CADILLAC CTS 2009-2019
CADILLAC DTS 2006-2011
CADILLAC ESCALADE 2007-2015
CADILLAC SRX 2006-2013
CADILLAC STS 2005-2011
CADILLAC XTS 2013-2019
CHEVROLET AVALANCHE 2007-2013
CHEVROLET BOLT EV 2017-2019
CHEVROLET CAMARO 2010-2015
CHEVROLET CAPRICE 2011-2013
CHEVROLET CAPTIVA SPORT 2012-2015
CHEVROLET COBALT 2005-2010
CHEVROLET CORVETTE 2014-2019
CHEVROLET CRUZE 2011-2018
CHEVROLET EQUINOX 2007-2008
CHEVROLET EXPRESS 1500 2009-2014
CHEVROLET EXPRESS 2500 2015-2018
CHEVROLET EXPRESS 3500 2015-2019
CHEVROLET EXPRESS 4500 2015-2016
CHEVROLET HHR 2006-2011
CHEVROLET IMPALA 2006-2019
CHEVROLET IMPALA LIMITED 2014-2016
CHEVROLET MALIBU 2008-2019
CHEVROLET MONTE CARLO 2006-2007
CHEVROLET ORLANDO 2012-2013
CHEVROLET SILVERADO 1500 2007-2019
CHEVROLET SONIC 2013-2019
CHEVROLET SPARK 2019
CHEVROLET SPARK EV 2014-2015
CHEVROLET SUBURBAN 2015
CHEVROLET SUBURBAN 1500 2007-2014
CHEVROLET SUBURBAN 2500 2011
CHEVROLET TAHOE 2007-2015
CHEVROLET TRAVERSE 2009-2017
CHEVROLET TRAX 2013-2019
CHEVROLET UPLANDER 2006-2008
GMC ACADIA 2007-2019
GMC SAVANA 1500 2009-2013
GMC SAVANA 2500 2016-2019
GMC SAVANA 3500 2016-2019
GMC SAVANA 4500 2016
GMC SIERRA 1500 2007-2019
GMC YUKON 2007-2015
GMC YUKON XL 2015
GMC YUKON XL 1500 2007-2014
HUMMER H2 2008-2009
PONTIAC G5 2007-2010
PONTIAC G6 2008-2010
PONTIAC GRAND PRIX 2005-2007
PONTIAC MONTANA 2005-2009
PONTIAC PURSUIT 2006
PONTIAC TORRENT 2007-2008
SAAB 9-4X 2011
SATURN AURA 2007-2009
SATURN OUTLOOK 2007-2010
SATURN RELAY 2005-2007
SATURN VUE 2009
SUZUKI XL-7 2009

Suffice it to say this was a full scale GM electrical/charging architecture system. Yes it was new for 05 but hardly a fancy luxury car thing.

Maybe I'll see if anyone on the forum has had to replace it and if it helped anything.

[kevm14]

Here's an important observation: it continues to crank well, both leaving work and again after picking Ian up from his activity. The car continues to run the nominal 13.3-13.4V (it is a little higher with the headlights on), which is not really a charging voltage, especially in colder weather.

But yet is still cranking well. What does this mean? It means that if it DOES have a draw, it's probably not that serious. The more I look at it, the more it seems like the charging system is just not calling for enough voltage.

Consider scenario A:
- Every start is somewhat labored, even after only sitting from 6:30am to a little after 5pm

Scenario B, after charging with the Battery Tender:
- Cranking is fine, even after sitting for that period or overnight.

The variable is I charged the battery, because the car is doing an insufficient job. Now I do think it will most likely settle back into being slower cranking at which point the car will begin running higher voltages to charge the battery but it seems to end up leaving the battery at a discharged state, which is a failblog for the charging system.

Now I can throw a wrench in my own works here...maybe by charging the battery I boost it back up to a higher level where it is able to sustain a parasitic draw for a while but I do think the key still lies with the way the battery is being charged.

I have a battery tester, my current meter, and the Tech 2.

I might play around but I do think I need to get back square one here, disconnect the battery, let all systems reset, CHARGE the battery with my tender, and then reconnect. It is possible that the computer is simply confused since I kept power on the car when I swapped batteries, and the system voltage was like 8V during that time. The design assumption is that the power would get disconnected when changing a battery, and I artificially kept life support on it with my Deutz to keep the clock....have I talked myself into disconnecting yet?