Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Morgan Aero 8, 2012< Plus 8, SuperSports, Coupe & Aeromax Series 5 - Niggles

Good call Tim,
Amg63 and tesla, and keep both mogs. Or add a 911 as an extravagance.

Definitely something wrong with the car Shooter. Many cars with immobilisers / alarms / trackers have a small drain which flattens the battery in 2 weeks or so. Happens to the Fezza and also to my bike. But thats a drain of a few milliamps. What you are talking of, if you really do mean half an hour, is a drain of 25 amps or more. Thats not unused circuits! Whats more something somewhere would be getting pretty hot and maybe even smokey.

Much more likely is that you battery is duff. Batteries lose capacity as the powder falls off the plates and this is something that happens much quicker with heat and vibration. So its quite possible that a battery that starts at 60aH ends up at 10aH but will still just start the engine if fully charged.

Then of course there is the possibility of bad connections in the run to the starter. Bad earth maybe.

Either way if that half hour is literally correct then it needs proper investigation. I suppose it could be a safety program in the immobiliser that says " if the plonker owner has left his key in the ignition, we maybe should help him by immobilising the engine. Ja - ist gut!" Or something like that

We have a friend who owns and Aero and when he arrived here on a visit he had problems starting the car if it was left overnight. Our local rather elderly auto electrician did not have a battery of exactly the correct size (it was about 1cm too high and would have hit the bonnet) but he discovered that there was an unusually high drain on the battery when the old battery was fitted. Our friend completed his holiday using the battery inertia switch under the bonnet to isolate the battery every night and re-setting it every morning.

The moral of the story is that the Aero requires a battery in perfect condition and once the condition of the battery falls below a certain level some item that causes a battery drain remains powered up and does not switch off. Once the new battery was fitted the drain was normal, and low, when the ignition was turned off.

I fitted a brand new battery to my Roadster and it still drains to fast I would expect a new car and new battery to sit on a driveway or in a garage unattended for a couple of months without starting issues.

Given that the S5 is a new car it shouldn't be suffering age related battery problems.

Sitting on a battery conditioner or isolating the battery isn't an acceptable answer, more work needs doing at the factory to get to the bottom of this.

I agree Milligoon, If I left the lights on in my fiesta the car will close the circuits down after a time period to stop having a flat battery, surely in this day with technology as it is Morgan could stop the battery drain?
Just left the Fiesta on the drive for 6 weeks, it started first go as normal, slk is sorned in the garage, been stood for 8 weeks, again started first time, all my Morgans needed a battery conditioner or it would have a flat battery in 2 weeks, my Aero was 6 years old when I sold it, original battery, it was isolated after every run, even after being stood over winter without charging it would fire up first time, Morgan have something fitted to the cars which is draining batteries, I would be interested to know what it is?
I would be really annoyed if I had spent upwards of £100,000 on a new car and I had to charge the battery after every run out!!

The typical battery draw of an immobiliser and alarm is 150ma. Multiply that by 24 hours gives 3.6 aH times 14 days is 50aH. Which is more than enough to take a car battery below the level at which it will start a big engine.

And that 150ma draw is common to a lot of cars and bikes. Just google current draw car alarm and you will see dozens of posts from all sorts of car make forums raising exactly this issue.

You are far more likely to have this issue with a £100k car. After all, would you bother with an alarm on an old Fiesta.

Its completely unrealistic to think that alarms and immobilisers and trackers not to mention things like clocks and keyless entry etc can be run without constant current draw. How can your alarm work if it isnt powered up?

And you arent charging your car after a run unless your alternator or battery are duff. What you are doing with the Optimate is powering the alarms etc whilst the engine isnt working.

Hi Howard, your calculations make sense but if it was true then surely the airport car parks would be full of cars that won't start, as I have previously mentioned both my cars can stand for long periods of time without losing charge, I plugged the battery conditioner into the SLK just before Christmas as it had been stood form mid Sept, it was only on for 6 hours before it reverted to maintain mode, the slk was then left from Christmas until last Saturday, it started first time, this was without using the battery conditioner.

My fiesta has an immobiliser, alarm, keyless entry, keyless start, climate control, sat nav, radio, clock, heated seats, ditto with the slk.
Ian

I wonder how that will all turn out. The Aero is different but that apart, it wont do what the Jag will do in terms of useability. Its the issue I find with the Fezza. Beautiful and sexy it might be, but it isnt useable enough. So I reckon there is a fair chance you will sell the Aero once you have had the Jag for a while.

Either way I'll be interested to hear how you get on with it because if I did replace the Fezza than the F type is the likely candidate for all its ridiculous complexity.

Hi Howard,

That was kinda the point behind buying the Jag, useability where the Aero will not do. But then when I want to have top down fun with something unique, the Aero will win every time.

I've been using my wifes Merc SL AMG for work a couple of days a week. She's got a bit peed off with me using her car so the Jag is really a replacement for that work run and general running around. The Aero will then do what it's good at.....make special days that little bit more special :-)

If I swapped the Aero, it would have to be for a Weismann MF4 or MF5 GT.....but being hand built cars again, I'm not sure they would fare any better than a Morgan........and they're German.......as opposed to British so it would be like choosing an ME109 over a Spitfire.....I couldn't do it!! :-)

Howard, my Ferrari has a battery isolator switch fitted as standard but I've never really had battery issues with it.

Funnily enough, I bought my second Tesla a couple of weeks ago and when I arrived home from collecting it the diagnostic warnings system told me the 12V battery was failing and needed replacing! I had only driven 140 miles from the showroom to my house. Anyway, took it to the more local Tesla store in Birmingham and they swapped it out.