Replacing 4 cell pack

[vh2q]

Replaced offending cell and now my bars are back, check engine light is gone too.
This situation was brewing for some time, exacerbated by leaving car parked for months on end. Threaded rods are NOT 10 x1 as in the posting on French car forum, the pitch is finer. My cells were yellow, the replacement I bought from a wrecker was blue. But it appears to be functionally the same. Did not shear a single bolt, but some of the undertray plastic fasteners got chewed up in the process. Car has minimal rust. The biggest pita is the rubber grommet for the cooling air. That and jacking it up enough to clear the batty once it's on the dolly. A drill driver w 10 mm socket is a must.

I am charging the defective cell to see if I can get it up to 4.1V. It's taking a charge, 2a is all my RC charger can muster.

One other note: a 12V 2A trickle charger for Pb battery got my spare 4 pack up to 16 V. I actually had to discharge the new cell to get it to match the partially charged good cells in the working pack.

 

[kiev]

That's great news--and excellent work to get it repaired and working again. Thanks for sharing on what to expect and what is involved.

 

[vh2q]

The rest of the story: I got the bad cell i removed up to about 3.6 V and then i noticed something: there are some physical differences between this (yellow) cell and the blue cells i bought, supposedly same model year. The terminals on the yellow cells have a locating button on both terminals vs just the positive on the blue; and the terminal pedestals on the yellow are thicker. This means you can subs a blue for a yellow but the circuit board will not sit down if you do it the other way round. FYI. The bar code on the blue cells starts with a 3E, the yellows with a 2E. Leads me to think the blue cell supercedes the yellow.