Left key in ignition, now won’t start (v8 vantage)

[Cloudy147]

Hi all,

I left my car key in the ignition yesterday by accident. Came to it this morning and there is a yellow warning triangle on the dash and nothing else.

It makes some noises when I turn the key, akin to the pumps starting or whatever it is, but pressing the start button does nothing and the dash it’s doesn’t light up.

2005 v8 vantage.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[alscar]

What happens when you take the key out and try again to start - nothing at all still ?

[pschlute]

Get the battery on a trickle charger. The key has probably kept some of the electronics alive and drained the battery.

[kevin_cambs_uk]

I was in my car learning where things were and the key was in but not doing anything and after a while it came up low battery

So they must think you are ready to go and start modules taking battery power

Kev

[Cloudy147]

Thanks everyone. Yeah when I take key out and put back in it’s still the same.

I’ve just plugged in the trickle charger and it’s showing 2 bars out of the possible 8. In addition I can’t pop the boot with the electric button so I think it’s a sign of a low battery. Hopefully!!

Will see what it looks like in a few hours.

Thanks again!

Edited by Cloudy147 on Thursday 8th June 12:53

[alscar]

Hope that does the trick but sounds promising.
Only other thing would have been to use a Noco lithium starter pack ( assuming you have one ) but if the key in did drain the battery then hopefully issue will go away once charged up to the full limit again.

[LTP]

You may now have another issue in that lead-acid batteries don't like being fully discharged. if your battery was old then it may no longer hold a charge

[Calinours]

If anyone interested I have pretty much fully regenerated near dead lead acid batteries using an arc welder. It’s not an old wives tale, it works about 20-40% of the time and seems to depend on the level of sulphation of individual cells. No point in posting as a new thread in Aston forum and I’m sure loads of threads on it generally on PH. I’m sure most AM owners would consider it dangerous and are in any case unlikely to own an arc welder. Sorry for the generalisations guys

Been an engineer, I’ve tried all the cool stuff. I once built a vegetable oil processor in my greenhouse and ran my diesel vehicles on the fuel I made for about a year. A lot of glycerine was produced as a by product, which is possible to further process into explosive, though I never went that far

[alscar]

Calinours said:

If anyone interested I have pretty much fully regenerated near dead lead acid batteries using an arc welder. It’s not an old wives tale, it works about 20-40% of the time and seems to depend on the level of sulphation of individual cells. No point in posting as a new thread in Aston forum and I’m sure loads of threads on it generally on PH. I’m sure most AM owners would consider it dangerous and are in any case unlikely to own an arc welder. Sorry for the generalisations guys

Been an engineer, I’ve tried all the cool stuff. I once built a vegetable oil processor in my greenhouse and ran my diesel vehicles on the fuel I made for about a year. A lot of glycerine was produced as a by product, which is possible to further process into explosive, though I never went that far

My wife won’t allow me to have a chainsaw but I assume an arc welder is a bit safer than that ?!
I think it’s been widely accepted for a long time that keeping Astons on a trickle charger just to avoid potential issues especially on occasional use vehicles still makes sense.

[Cloudy147]

We have progress! My 2 lights are now up to 3 on the ctek charger, and when I put the key in the ignition, the dash lights up again and the ignition is making all the right sounds. It also shows the warning “low battery”, but the boot opens now too. So I think we are on the up and up!

I will leave it on charge for a while, probably for a day or two as I don’t need to use a car until next week. I will give it a bit of a startup and test once the charger says it’s full.

Thanks again!

[Nigel_O]

Fingers crossed that a weekend’s charge will sort it. However, I would check the date on the battery and replace if it’s more than six or seven years old. You’ve already seen how a Vantage behaves when the voltage drops and old batteries can fail almost overnight.

I’ve just replaced my 2015 battery - I only had one low battery warning after playing with the music settings for half an hour, but I didn’t want to risk being stranded somewhere. The only pre-requisite is to make sure you’re in a really calm state of mind, because the battery clamps are the work of the devil…

[kevin_cambs_uk]

Good stuff!
Thanks for the update

Kev

[Simpo Two]

Calinours said:

If anyone interested I have pretty much fully regenerated near dead lead acid batteries using an arc welder.

The mind boggles! Worthy of a YouTube video methinks...

Re using a conditioner - last year my battery went pretty stone flat and I tried a conditioner (not Ctek but Airflow) for 2-3 days. Unfortunately no dice. So I bought a proper modern battery charger - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09FKXHW2R - and in a day things were back to normal. Now the conditioner is always connected, just as it was with my TVRs. Haven't been anywhere for 10 days as still waiting for the bd tail light to come back!

[Calinours]

Simpo Two said:

The mind boggles! Worthy of a YouTube video methinks...

Making videos ain’t really my thing, I only joined PH a couple of years back, and that was just to do a post on realising my life dream of buying a 1970s V8.

Someone must have done something though, youtube is full of that sort of stuff.

[Simpo Two]

Calinours said:

Making videos ain’t really my thing, I only joined PH a couple of years back, and that was just to do a post on realising my life dream of buying a 1970s V8.

PH is a curious thing; it's partly responsible for what I do and where I am now. It is a superb resource of intelligent people from all walks of life.

[Cloudy147]

Hi all,

Just to close this one off and confirm that the battery charged worked. Hurrah!! My CTEK conditioner charged it up to full, yet when I put the ignition on, the car still said "low battery" on the dash initially. But it started first time without any hesitation. I gave it a run down the motorway and to the petrol station and no issues since, and no warning lights.

Happy days, thanks again everyone!

[Calinours]

It is odd. but owning a VH Aston is to own a rare beast that won’t tolerate even the slightestly degraded battery. And lead acid degrades, quickly.. The thoroughbred wants quality oates, not pigswill.

Lead acid is pigswill. The solution is a lithium polymer battery. They cheap now and solve 90% of these issues as they do not degrade and last 5-10x longer for same given duty cycle.

Lithium batteries were invented to make VH aston owners happy.