Not Starting with a Bad Battery

[Henry M]

I have a 2012 V12 Vantage that I bought new in 2013. It’s been a great car. Never any real problems. I keep it maintained yearly at the local Aston Martin dealer. I use a battery maintainer consistently.

A few weeks ago I went to my garage to start the car and drive to a friends car gallery. When I pushed the “key” nothing happened beyond the normal lights displaying on the instrument panel. So I expected that the battery was dead although it had been plugged-in to the maintainer. I got my volt meter out and read about 8 volts across the battery terminals. Not good, but not unexpected for a 9 year old battery. Unfortunately, my garage space at our building is confined between concrete block walls so I didn’t have a lot of room to work so changing out the battery myself wasn’t going to be something I wanted to attempt.

I decided to purchase a small jump start battery and received it a couple to days later. I charged it and then corrected it to the Aston. The starter would crank the engine but the engine never fired-up. I called my insurance company’s roadside assistance and they sent a man with a specially rigged Jeep with a 30 foot jumper cable. After trying every possible way to get the car to start the same problem persisted. I even went to the Aston dealer and got a new battery that I hooked-up with jumper cables in place of the old battery but got the same results.

I finally bit the bullet and had the Aston flat-bedded to the dealer. They tried a jump start battery but of course got the same results. They hooked-up their Aston diagnostic computer and it reported a voltage of 7.9 volts and that the throttle bodies had been disabled. So no matter what you could do to get the battery system up to snuff the car will never start. The solution was to use the Aston diagnostic computer to enable the throttle bodies and then with the old battery replaced with a new one the car immediately fired-up.

Luckily all this happened while I was at home with the car safely tucked away in the garage. It could have been a real pain if that hadn’t been the case. I’ve now learned that batteries don’t last 9 years and Aston’s don’t tolerate bad batteries.

[Dewi 2]

Glad that you eventually resolved your failed battery problem, but what a palaver.

The original battery on my Vantage was working fine at 8 years old. Having read about the associated electrical troubles on here, I decided that I was pushing my luck. Who knows, it might have lasted another couple of years, but I asked for it to be replaced at service.

Now that all modern cars are so full of electronics, I wonder if every car 'plays up' when the main battery reaches the end of life?

[Simon.b]

Glad you finally got it sorted.

I believe this is a common problem with modern cars and depending on the design of the circuitry, a low battery voltage can affect a vehicles systems in many different ways, some having just minor glitches and others with more serious issues like yours. Just the way it is I'm afraid.

That said what would be useful to know is, what kind of battery conditioner were you using. Was it just a simple monitor and top up type or a more complex diagnostic one that should have picked up that the battery was failing.

Cheers,

Simon.

[Henry M]

I use the newer Aston Martin battery tender, not the original one. Interestingly, after trying to start the car unsuccessfully and putting the tender back on, after several hours the tender would report fully charged. I have a second tender of the same model and I tried it with the same results.

The real point is, once the throttle bodies are disabled you can’t start the car without resetting them no matter what voltage you present to the car.