High battery discharge and $50 off battery coupon

fazman · 10-22-2014, 07:10 PM

Hi All,

So I noticed recently that my car has been showing a yellow battery symbol if I shut off the car and sit inside for about 5 minutes or so. I was surprised the first time it happened and I used the hidden menu to look up the battery voltage at the time (It was in the high 11's maybe around 11.8v). Last winter I know I was able to crank the motor even in temps of 5*F and voltage of 10.9v in the hidden menu as a reference point. My stock battery is the white 90AH/160RC battery that is exactly 7 years old with 95,500 miles.

In the Check control when I got the yellow battery I wanted to see what the actual issue was, so when I got to that error I held the BC Stalk button for a few seconds until it switched to show me the CC ID value of 229. A little bit of digging on google for "e90 cc id 229" came up with all the various Check Control ID values and the definitions. I noticed quickly that they had several CC ID values for the same symbol of "yellow battery" each with a different meaning. Mine was a simple, "hey your battery is kinda low... charge it up some and by the way we are going to shut off electronic consumers now so you can start the car later".

So rather than let this problem get worse, I'm going to just pro-actively change out the battery with a new one from AAP (Advanced Auto Parts). My stock battery lasted me a nice 7 years and that's really awesome, I was never tempted to use AGM because it is about 8lbs heavier and has a lesser warranty period (only 3 years). Coupled with the fact that a straight like-for-like battery doesn't require re-coding (just a simple 2 second registration with the free SMOOTH1's BMWLogger software). So my dilemma comes in with the normal flooded battery costing about $150 at AAP and the AGM battery being $188 at AAP... They have a standard use coupon code called "HUGE50" which will give you $50 off any $175+ purchase. So now I'm saying... it's cheaper for me to go AGM and I can experiment a little with my car to compare FLA vs AGM on my car. At $138 for an AGM battery is not a huge cost and if it only lasts 3 years... that's less than $50/year.

So now I need to figure out how to update the VO on my car and then re-code it for 90AH_AGM. Registration is the easy part... takes 1 second with the BMWLogger program... but that's the last step. I also want to minimize driving the car on the wrong programming because I know that the FLA charging profile usually pumps the charging rate to 15v or so which is bad for AGM which likes 14v charge rates.

So the point of posting this is, it's getting close to winter and the temps are going to drop which means batteries will be dieing soon and TPMS sensors will go DING cuz the air in our tires will take up less space in cold temps. Start planning now before it gets really bad outside and you are stranded in the snow.

tomchang75 · 10-22-2014, 07:20 PM

I have seen ppl replaced the battery with similiar spec without recode and no issue. If you replace a non-AGM with AGM battery, then I would imagine it will through off the code reader and possibly cause the battery to run low.

fazman · 10-22-2014, 07:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomchang75

I have seen ppl replaced the battery with similiar spec without recode and no issue. If you replace a non-AGM with AGM battery, then I would imagine it will through off the code reader and possibly cause the battery to run low.

Yup, your on the right track... I tried to point those facts out. Like-for-Like (TYPE and AH) only requires a simple "registration" which means when you look in INPA it just resets all the battery "history" and updates the battery counter with the mileage (in KM) that you changed the last 5 batteries. This is nothing critical to do but a nice to have done in a "like-for-like" scenario.

If you change the AH and/or TYPE, then you will need to re-code the car and it is highly advised to change the VO so in the future if someone blows away all your coding... the VO will tell it to use the correct battery settings installed rather than the one that the car came with originally. After you correctly code the car then you need to register the battery which is more for resetting/tracking history of the battery.

Having the wrong settings for battery TYPE will probably cause the battery to die prematurely

Having the wrong AH for the battery will probably cause it to be under/over charged and die prematurely.

10-22-2014, 07:10 PM	#1
fazman Brigadier General 681 Rep 3,696 Posts Drives: 335 e90 Join Date: Feb 2011 Location: Los Angeles iTrader: (0)	High battery discharge and $50 off battery coupon Hi All, So I noticed recently that my car has been showing a yellow battery symbol if I shut off the car and sit inside for about 5 minutes or so. I was surprised the first time it happened and I used the hidden menu to look up the battery voltage at the time (It was in the high 11's maybe around 11.8v). Last winter I know I was able to crank the motor even in temps of 5*F and voltage of 10.9v in the hidden menu as a reference point. My stock battery is the white 90AH/160RC battery that is exactly 7 years old with 95,500 miles. In the Check control when I got the yellow battery I wanted to see what the actual issue was, so when I got to that error I held the BC Stalk button for a few seconds until it switched to show me the CC ID value of 229. A little bit of digging on google for "e90 cc id 229" came up with all the various Check Control ID values and the definitions. I noticed quickly that they had several CC ID values for the same symbol of "yellow battery" each with a different meaning. Mine was a simple, "hey your battery is kinda low... charge it up some and by the way we are going to shut off electronic consumers now so you can start the car later". So rather than let this problem get worse, I'm going to just pro-actively change out the battery with a new one from AAP (Advanced Auto Parts). My stock battery lasted me a nice 7 years and that's really awesome, I was never tempted to use AGM because it is about 8lbs heavier and has a lesser warranty period (only 3 years). Coupled with the fact that a straight like-for-like battery doesn't require re-coding (just a simple 2 second registration with the free SMOOTH1's BMWLogger software). So my dilemma comes in with the normal flooded battery costing about $150 at AAP and the AGM battery being $188 at AAP... They have a standard use coupon code called "HUGE50" which will give you $50 off any $175+ purchase. So now I'm saying... it's cheaper for me to go AGM and I can experiment a little with my car to compare FLA vs AGM on my car. At $138 for an AGM battery is not a huge cost and if it only lasts 3 years... that's less than $50/year. So now I need to figure out how to update the VO on my car and then re-code it for 90AH_AGM. Registration is the easy part... takes 1 second with the BMWLogger program... but that's the last step. I also want to minimize driving the car on the wrong programming because I know that the FLA charging profile usually pumps the charging rate to 15v or so which is bad for AGM which likes 14v charge rates. So the point of posting this is, it's getting close to winter and the temps are going to drop which means batteries will be dieing soon and TPMS sensors will go DING cuz the air in our tires will take up less space in cold temps. Start planning now before it gets really bad outside and you are stranded in the snow.
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10-22-2014, 07:20 PM	#2
tomchang75 Private First Class 14 Rep 125 Posts Drives: 335i Join Date: Jan 2009 Location: SoCal iTrader: (0)	I have seen ppl replaced the battery with similiar spec without recode and no issue. If you replace a non-AGM with AGM battery, then I would imagine it will through off the code reader and possibly cause the battery to run low.
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