Celica Tsport - Flat Battery - Is this a comon problem?

[RAS]

I've recently purchased a Gen7 Face lift Celica as a second car.

Since owning the car we have had the battery go flat on us on several occasions, usually when the car has been left for a couple of weeks, but it has also gone flat after a short drive and in that instance I needed the assistance of the RAC to get it started.

I have had the battery and alternator charging rate checked twice by a reputable auto-factor and on both instances the battery showed up as in good condition and the charge rate was fine. I was told by the auto-factor that the car was not being driven enough and that it needed a twenty five mile run after each start to top up the battery. As a last resort I now trickle charge the car on a weekly basis and that seems to have overcome the problem.

However I have just been away on holiday for a week in the car. It was a 250 mile drive to the destination and during the week I drove another 250 miles, evenly spread over the week with probably around 5 starts a day (average about 8 miles per start). On the morning of the last day the battery was flat, luckily I had been able to park on a hill and was able to bump start the car.

I have previously owned a pre-face lift Gen 7 190, which I used as a daily drive and which I used on similar holidays and in the 120k+ miles I did in the car I had no issues. I have read that the face lift car has a physically smaller and lower output battery.

I also have owned and used other cars in similar ways without this sort of problem.

I'm not sure I really buy the 25 miles between starts argument as I'm sure lots of people especially public transport commuters, must use their cars in a similar way without problem. I can't imagine that our pattern of car usage whilst on holiday was different to most other peoples holiday usage!

Other than the alarm I don't think anything else is draining the battery, but that the next thing to look at.

Before I start investigating the problem further, has anyone else had similar problems?

Could it be a specific Gen 7 face lift problem or is this a common problem for modern cars?

Any help, comments or suggestions would be appreciated.

Many thanks

[Martin F]

RAS said:

Other than the alarm I don't think anything else is draining the battery, but that the next thing to look at.

If it was my car i'd be starting with this. You should expect less than 50mA drain whilst the car is standing.

If your alarm has a battery backup it's possible that the backup battery has died and that is causing a continual drain on your car battery.

[gazchap]

Definitely not common.

Is there an aftermarket alarm or anything installed that could be causing the drain?

[Monkey boy 1]

Got a 1996 Gen 6 Celica GT, and had a similar problem. Went onto the Celica club UK website where there is a hoste of info on the Celicas.
Seems as if the battery is getting to around 10 years old they do give up the ghost very quickly. I could stat the car no probs, then take it for a run, stop the engine then try and restart it, all I would get would be a click and the instrument needles would do a full sweep then nothing.
Changed the Battery and no more problems.

[RAS]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

After further investigation I discovered some Muppet's idea of removing a phone kit was to remove the visible bits and neatly leave all the other electronics connected and still live very neatly hidden behind the das!!

Despite removing these I still had a problem with the battery holding charge for more than a day, so had it tested for the third time this morning and this time it failed, so new battery now installed - never been so pleased to have something fail before!

Hopefully, fingers crossed, the problem has been a combination of these 2 things

[eybic]

I had a similar problem with the battery in my GT-Four. I was sooo happy when the battery failed the test too.