Renault Kangoo key-off battery current

[valhalla]

Has anyone got a measure of the sort of current that should be seen on a Renault Kangoo, circa 2013MY?

I have one from last week, still on the back ramps, and it has has a battery drain issue with the customer, except that it appears that the drain may be "normal". Like most Renaults, this has a stupidly long time after taking the key out of the steering lock before it properly shuts-down. I have measured 30mins, and I think that is par-for-the-course for this sort of van. During this time, the radio is possible to be operated by anyone sitting in the van, no key needed, just poke the Power Button and enjoy Jeremy Vine, for thirty (long) minutes.

What is a bit strange is that the van will wake-up for 30mins each time the doors are opened, and that the current is quite high whether the radio is commanded or not. I have measured around 1.4Amps without the radio, and around 1.8Amps with the radio, and it makes no difference to the time whether the radio is commanded or not.

The current after the van has properly shut-down, after 30mins, is negligable small, much smaller than my current-clamp can read accurately, so I would hazard less than 20mA on the scale I have with the Pico. So as far as battery drain is concerned, it is all happening within the 30mins cycles, and not (so I think at this stage) due to any other residual currents from the battery.

It is also obvious that all the residual current is via the main battery lead to the underbonnet fusebox only, and not into the engine lead or the auxiliary power-lead next to the main fusebox supply. So I only have one thing to measure and concern myself about.

I would think 1.4Amps is quite a lot for the UHC (smart fusebox/central control module), but I vaguely remember that the Renaults can do this, and the theory is that you drive your way around the problem (recharge battery with alternator) without realising it. Except......in a van, the doors can be opened and closed many times during the day, so you could easily spend almost 8hours of this sort of current, implying circa 12Ah loss in that time. Not a problem if the van has a decent drive inbetween, but a big issue if it hardly charges from one day to the next. Usable battery capacity on this particular van (new battery, Lion brand) would be around 50Ah by my calcs, and that implies a full discharge in a week. Which is what the customer has experienced, when I pressed him for information. So "normal". If 1.4A is a usual current for this application.

[trickydicky]

Sounds normal if it drops below 50mA when it finally goes to sleep.

Worth leaving the current clamp on for a few hours and plotting the current, see if it wakes up intermittently

Lion Battery, would be my main concern, carry out a battery test with the pico and see if it absorbs decent current

[valhalla]

Oct 22, 2021 13:58:10 GMT 1 trickydicky said:

Sounds normal if it drops below 50mA when it finally goes to sleep.

Worth leaving the current clamp on for a few hours and plotting the current, see if it wakes up intermittently

Lion Battery, would be my main concern, carry out a battery test with the pico and see if it absorbs decent current

It was fine outside of this 30min shutdown - I logged it over a day, and it never came back on or dissipated more than circa 35mA, so I was happy that the 30min "radio period" was the issue.

The Lion battery worried me as well! Hence I did an extended drop-test under starting and charging conditions for 2mins during/after crank, and it all looked good on the van - there was a query from the Pico Dignostics routine about a high 14.8v charging immediately after start, but that all looked fine to me. I also did an on-board battery maintenance charge with a CTEK unit, and finally convinced myself that the only way I could improve the function of the electrics on this van was;

1) Reduce the load during 30min shutdown (pull some fuses from the infotainment system)

2) Reduce the shutdown time (find a way of re-programming the UCH)

3) Inhibit the wake-up on the van (remove/bypass door switches)

My report to the owner, who now has the van back, went something along the lines;

a) Battery took a long time to fully-charge, and may never have been fully charged, even when supplied new

b) Modern vehicles rely upon moderate use between lay-ups, whereas this van was typically parked for 4days at a time, often with the doors open and closed at regular intervals - the owner is a carpenter, who walks/cycles home if he doesn't absolutely need to shift his tools around - quite common on Skye!

c) The owner lives off-grid, and therefore relies upon the van for some "normal maintenance" on things like mobile-phones, etc. plugged into the USB charge-socket; he had not realised the alternator would already have struggled to cope with the sort of duty-cycle the van was being put-through. He previous van, a VW Caddy, had no issues like this, but this Renault has caught him out, and therefore is not suitable for the purpose and lifestyle that he leads.

To hammer the message home, I have thermal-camera imaging of his dashboard and glove-compartment, taken after 25mins after key-out, and doors closed. Three areas stand-out; The radio (warm), the SatNav (warm) and the USB-outlet over the glove-compartment (fairly warm). Nowhere in the interior fusebox was there any sign of warmth, so it appears that these three consumer really are the culprits.

You cannae beat the laws of Physics, and I have offered to come up with some sort of off-grid solution to best keep his van alive from week-to-week. Sadly, the designers at Renault will not have thought about any of this, as nowhere in the handbook could I find any procedure to limit the shutdown time.

Modern cars....

[Joepublic]

Is there a dealer update for this? It could be the previous owners use was vastly different so the issue never raised its head?

[valhalla]

I'm looking into the options for update, but frankly - if it comes down to the van having to go to a dealer, I reckon the owner would sooner just part with it. People in this neck of the woods have short shrift for such modern fads, as they see it for what it is; gadgets that just make the device unreliable.

I keep warning them, but they don't listen.......

.....if it really matters, and you need to get home at night, stick to something old and reliable.

Hence we are all waiting to see how the INEOS Grenadier finally turns-out, as that could be the "modern answer" - nothing else is.