Happy new year, new year to new battery for our C5 X7 3.0hdi (tourer)

[Jay-Bruce]

Hi, and happy new year t' y'all. Our C5 hasn't taken too kindly to being laid up for a few days during the cold snaps and or holidays, having needed jump started a couple of times, so I'm going to treat it to a new battery for the new year. If I change the battery spec, do I need to update the car's configuration via the Diagbox?

The reason I ask is I'm looking at refreshing and upgrading the battery on our X7, I have a Yuasa black 15 year guarantee 110 size battery in stock, but it's too long to fit the rails on the battery tray, which seem to be set for an 096 battery. The fact the 110 doesn't fit is ironic as it was bought for my 407 2.7 v6 hdi, and the X7 is a 3.0hdi, so a ten per cent bigger displacement, more electronics, and a smaller battery? Only the french

So, since my 110 won't fit, I'm looking at the best possible solution in the 096 size. With my Halfords trade card, I can get a Yuasa "HSB096 Silver 12V Car Battery 5 Year Guarantee" which has 740 Cold Cranking Amps and a capacity of 80Ah, for about the same money as a budget brand 096 from mainstream retailers. The Yuasa seems to be the highest specced battery I can find in terms of CCA / AH, so it seems to be the best solution. The other option is a bosch silver with 780CCA / 77AH, but it's from a retailer 35 miles away, and I'd rather have the increased capacity than the extra cold cranking amps. So I'm going with the Yuasa.

What I'm wondering is do I need to configure anything in software for the new battery? As in does the computer need to "know" the charge capacity (amp hours)? If I do need to make any changes, could someone point me in the direction of what menus / pages I'd need to run through?

Thanks for reading this and also for any insights you may share in the replies

[MattBLancs]

Hi, and happy new year t' y'all.

...

I have a Yuasa black 15 year guarantee 110 size battery in stock, but it's too long to fit the rails on the battery tray, which seem to be set for an 096 battery. The fact the 110 doesn't fit is ironic as it was bought for my 407 2.7 v6 hdi, and the X7 is a 3.0hdi, so a ten per cent bigger displacement, more electronics, and a smaller battery? Only the french

Happy new year!

Given the spec of the battery you have in stock and it's long guarantee, how hard have you looked at modifying the battery tray to allow that 110 into place? I think that's where I would focus my efforts. I mean why just buy the correct item when you can create yet another mini project!

[myglaren]

If you keep your old battery, it might be interesting to apply this to it.
Whether or not is effective I can't say.
There are suggested improvements in the comments.

[Jay-Bruce]

The only way I could have made it work would have been by cutting the short cleats off of the battery tray, and as much as I like engineering challenges, I wasn't keen on cutting chunks off of the car to shoehorn in an old battery, especially given that would have meant using an angle grinder inside the car's interior, it's just too nice a car to do that sort of thing too. So in the end up, I just went with the Yuasa, which has the same footprint, but is 15mm taller than the "100" sized battery it replaced, and much better specced, 740 cold cranking amps vs 640 cold cranking amps & 80 amp hours vs 70 amp hours.

I've got an optimate2 battery charger that will desulphate a completely flat battery, don't know what if anything it does for middle to higher voltage batteries? That 555timer puls generator thing looks cool, pity it's not an off the shelf item as I'd probably have just bought one, but I suspect that building one of those is going to be the engineering mini project I end up taking out of this thread.

[MattBLancs]

Sounds like a good solution. I hadn't realised that the tray in question couldn't be detached and fetched out of the car, fair enough about not wanting to set to with the grinder inside the boot!

[Jay-Bruce]

Not going to lie, I did look to see if it was bolted or riveted

[KennyW]

Jay,

FYI, I have the Bosch silver battery in mine and I will be changing to soon for the same.

Kenny