Good morning all,
I ran into a situation where I left my lights on (the don't shut off automatically) while the car was parked for the week and came back to a fully depleted battery. The surprising part for me was just how difficult it was to get the car started and a few issues that I ran into by being impaitent.
It took along time, best guess about 30 minutes before the engine would even roll over. I was hooked into a 2011 Golf TDI no less and also tried a very stout 12VDC jump pack. I made various attempts to start the car when it seemed that the amount of time I waited was more than reasonable. It wasn't and caused some pretty spooky electronic indicators to flash irratically, my displays to brown out etc. even after I stopped the crank cycle. After I got the car started (luckily I hadn't fried everything) I found the glow plug indicator flashing and had to make most of the trip home without cruise control and a few other items. Fortunately for me at the five hour mark I shut the car off for a few to get some coffee and when I came out to restart it EVERYTHING returned to normal.
So my advice would be DON'T rush the process. It is warm out and I would say that if I had been wise enough I wouldn't have even tried to crank the car at all for about 30 minutes. In the cold it would likely be worse.
The book doesn't have any special instructions regarding the situation. Even though my connections were very good I found it surprising that it took sooooo long!
Thanks to Kevin for sticking around and giving me a hand. Matt
I ran into a situation where I left my lights on (the don't shut off automatically) while the car was parked for the week and came back to a fully depleted battery. The surprising part for me was just how difficult it was to get the car started and a few issues that I ran into by being impaitent.
It took along time, best guess about 30 minutes before the engine would even roll over. I was hooked into a 2011 Golf TDI no less and also tried a very stout 12VDC jump pack. I made various attempts to start the car when it seemed that the amount of time I waited was more than reasonable. It wasn't and caused some pretty spooky electronic indicators to flash irratically, my displays to brown out etc. even after I stopped the crank cycle. After I got the car started (luckily I hadn't fried everything) I found the glow plug indicator flashing and had to make most of the trip home without cruise control and a few other items. Fortunately for me at the five hour mark I shut the car off for a few to get some coffee and when I came out to restart it EVERYTHING returned to normal.
So my advice would be DON'T rush the process. It is warm out and I would say that if I had been wise enough I wouldn't have even tried to crank the car at all for about 30 minutes. In the cold it would likely be worse.
The book doesn't have any special instructions regarding the situation. Even though my connections were very good I found it surprising that it took sooooo long!
Thanks to Kevin for sticking around and giving me a hand. Matt