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Battery Replacement - this may be a record!

1K views 8 replies 8 participants last post by  MSAMMY 
#1 ·
Well, well, after 2,538 days, we finally had to have our original battery replaced in our 550i. That's a total of 6 years, 11 months, 17 days! That's just shy of 7 years on the original battery!!! After all of the horror stories about short-term battery replacements, parasitic draw problems, etc. we decided to finally post a good news story on a battery replacement.

Anyone else have an E60 with a good news battery replacement that exceeds 7 years??? Post on and let's talk batteries - good news or bad!!!
 
#2 · (Edited)
I have a 2004 BMW 525i and was forced to replace the battery two months ago. Could not survive even with a jumpstart. Definitely made the most use of it. Original date stamped on the - end was late '03. Should have replaced it sooner; every now and then I was getting errors ranging from abs, dsc, tire pressure low, general system failure, etc.
 
#4 ·
Nice to see posts with good things to say rather than just complaints! :thumbup:
 
#5 ·
Anything special you guys did to make batteries last that long? Using a battery tender, high mileage, few short trips?
 
#9 ·
That's the thing, it seems to be hit or miss with E60 battery life with no definitive pattern at all. My commute over the 7 years was 3.2 miles each way. The car has only 58K miles on her and was only driven from April-November each year. For the 4 months of winter storage, I simply plugged in the trickle-charger to maintain the battery whenever I remembered to do so every couple of weeks or so. One winter, I skipped the charging completely. So short commutes, parked in winter with random trickle charging worked for me, but does not fit the profile of most batteries that fail with short commutes, weird.
 
#8 · (Edited)
Just replaced the battery on a Mercedes that was on the same battery for 8 years! Battery eventually went bad according to the dealer, never any problems starting the car, but the radio would get locked out.

And my previous car (also a Mercedes) had the same battery that came with the car from the factory for 7+ years.

Do note, none of the Mercedes-Benz vehicles have as much electrical demand as the BMW. For instance, my BMW doesn't go to sleep for over 30 minutes after shutting it off. The Mercedes-Benz cars seem to go to sleep within 10-15 minutes after last touching the car. Furthermore, the Mercedes-Benz vehicles were consistently and fairly regularly driven. Almost driven daily.

And this BMW 545i in the garage is probably on its third or fourth battery. But that's because the car was under-driven (28,000 miles in the first 8 years) and many short trips. Now that the car is over driven and a new battery was installed and programmed at the dealership at the cost of nearly $500 in January of 2013, I'm hoping that I won't have to replace the battery anytime soon and that it will last for at least five years assuming the car is regularly driven. The alternator and voltage regulator was also changed as well.
 
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