Any redress on a private car sale?

cymruchris

Grumpy_chap said:

Thanks you - is "coding the car" simple?  Really, the new battery was fitted by RAC, so they should have done the "coding the car" when they fitted the battery.  Are they likely to have?

Not every car needs to be coded - only those with this smart charging cycle - but the RAC should have done it if it was needed. 

Flight3287462

shiraz99 said:

Flight3287462 said:

Lockdown has hammered many car batteries over the last couple of years.  Mine was feeling jaded a year ago but I have nursed it along for the past year.  But today I bit the bullet and have ordered a replacement (had a meeting this morning and it flashed up it needed charged, I just managed to get it to catch, can't afford to risk it again).

£120 for a Varta (Bosch) AGM battery from the Battery Group which I thought wasn't too bad (2.0TDi Superb)

And have the battery registered/coded to your car?

That was easy enough, I have an OBDeleven for VAG cars makes it quite easy.  Although having said that it lit up like a Christmas tree with faults, apparently you need to drive it for a minute or so until it settles down and they clear.

Grumpy_chap

Grumpy_chap said:

What does "code the car" mean?

I had a new battery in my Focus (2007) and ever since then the display in the dashboard that gives stuff like mileage, trip data, average fuel consumption etc has been blank.  I thought it was just the LCD display that was faulty, but perhaps not?  
Is it something I need to be bothered about?

cymruchris said:

When the car is new - it puts a certain voltage into battery charging circuit - over time as the battery gets older, it's programmed to increase the voltage to compensate for your now slowly failing battery. If when you put a new battery on, you don't tell the car, it continues to charge at this higher rate, potentially damaging the new battery. So coding it to the car pretty much means telling the car to reduce the charging voltage again, and begin the cycle of increasing it over time once more. It won't be linked to your LCD displays not showing data - that'll be another fault. 

I just realised that I am going to need an MOT on my car but the LCD display is faulty so there is no mileage visible.
Will that stop the MOT being done / cause a fail?  Will the garage simply put a reader onto the computer directly to take down the mileage?

Ditzy_Mitzy

Grumpy_chap said:

Grumpy_chap said:

What does "code the car" mean?

I had a new battery in my Focus (2007) and ever since then the display in the dashboard that gives stuff like mileage, trip data, average fuel consumption etc has been blank.  I thought it was just the LCD display that was faulty, but perhaps not?  
Is it something I need to be bothered about?

cymruchris said:

When the car is new - it puts a certain voltage into battery charging circuit - over time as the battery gets older, it's programmed to increase the voltage to compensate for your now slowly failing battery. If when you put a new battery on, you don't tell the car, it continues to charge at this higher rate, potentially damaging the new battery. So coding it to the car pretty much means telling the car to reduce the charging voltage again, and begin the cycle of increasing it over time once more. It won't be linked to your LCD displays not showing data - that'll be another fault. 

I just realised that I am going to need an MOT on my car but the LCD display is faulty so there is no mileage visible.
Will that stop the MOT being done / cause a fail?  Will the garage simply put a reader onto the computer directly to take down the mileage?

You'll be fine.  We had a BMW years ago with a digital odometer which had broken, the test used to say 'unreadable' or 'illegible' or some such and the mileage was put down as 'not recorded'.  There's no requirement for an odometer to be present, working or, indeed, accurate.