Reading the "battery change" thread.....

[qprdude]

so well presented by Myglaren. I commented that it seemed a horrendous procedure for such a simple operation (timewise).
Thinking that I might have to do a "battery off" job, to remove a tyre sensor warning message, I had a look in my Citroen Handbook for battery removal. Basically...... Remove the cover, remove the terminals, refit new battery. That sounds more like I would expect. What''s all the palaver with the waiting times, touching the terminals together etc, and where did it come from?

[411514]

The long winded method of battery diconnection/reconnection I dont think is necessarily specific to citroen's, just recommended good practise on all modern multiplexed cars. It does work, I have had a couple of phantom faults ranging from minor electrical oddities, to the car refusing to start, all of which were not curable by just disconnecting and reconnnecting the battery but following the procedure detailed disappeared. I think it is mainly to reduce the risk of abnormalities in current pulses (magnitude/time) and whilst you could probably get away with just disconnecting/reconnecting battery 99 times, it would be rather unfortunate if expensive damage/inconvenience was caused for want of spending a few minutes drinking tea, Sam

[qprdude]

It's more than a few minutes though. It's over. An hour and a half. That's a blooming lot of tea, or more to the point a nice little earner for a garage. I've had some complex modern cars, but I've never heard of this before. BMW, Saab, Audi and nothing but disconnect the terminals and refit to new battery.