Question about twin spiral cell BATTERIES in 2007 EOS V6

[kratedisease]

My 2007 Vw EOS uses twin ( double in seris) 6 volt spiral cell optima batteries stock from from the OEM factory. All V6 EOS received these batteries from the factory stock. ( the turbo 4 cylinder uses a convernional single 12 volt battery)
I need new batteries But at the dealer they are $500 just for the twin 6 volt batteries , not including install ( about one hour of time) I found out that optima the manufacturer sells the optima 6 volt twin batteries for about $300 at any auto parts store and even summit racing sells them new, BUT they are the red top and the dealer battery is a yellow top. Optima ONLY sells the yellow top in 6 volt to VW directly and does NOT and will NOT supply the aftermarket with 6 volt yellow tops. MY QUESTION IS.... has anyone with the V6 EOS used the RED top optima instead of the dealer yellow top optima ? any issues ? I called optima and they said that the yellow top maintaines a more steady operating voltage which the VW computer may need to aviod error codes for lower or unsteady voltage that may occur with a red top.

ANY input from senior technical people on this. ?? I want to save some cash and put the red tops in myself.. I can be reached directly at beez75@gmail.com

[BostonB6]

As I understand it yellow tops are a deep cycle battery which is recommended for cars with heavier electrical demands, such as a power roof. The VR6 has limited space under the hood so they mounted the battery in the trunk.

That said, I believe that the non-VR6 EOS uses a standard battery, so I don't believe that you'll have any problem with the red tops. I would limit the opening & closing of the roof without the car running.

[mark_d_drake]

408 at 1stVWParts

[deltaP]

Red Top 6v batteries $150 ea

http://www.jegs.com/p/Optima-Batteri...0002/-1:laugh:


$132

http://www.amazon.com/Optima-Batteri...ype=automotive

[gerryc]

My 2007 Vw EOS uses twin ( double in seris) 6 volt spiral cell optima batteries stock from from the OEM factory. All V6 EOS received these batteries from the factory stock. ( the turbo 4 cylinder uses a convernional single 12 volt battery)
I need new batteries But at the dealer they are $500 just for the twin 6 volt batteries , not including install ( about one hour of time) I found out that optima the manufacturer sells the optima 6 volt twin batteries for about $300 at any auto parts store and even summit racing sells them new, BUT they are the red top and the dealer battery is a yellow top. Optima ONLY sells the yellow top in 6 volt to VW directly and does NOT and will NOT supply the aftermarket with 6 volt yellow tops. MY QUESTION IS.... has anyone with the V6 EOS used the RED top optima instead of the dealer yellow top optima ? any issues ? I called optima and they said that the yellow top maintaines a more steady operating voltage which the VW computer may need to aviod error codes for lower or unsteady voltage that may occur with a red top.

ANY input from senior technical people on this. ?? I want to save some cash and put the red tops in myself.. I can be reached directly at beez75@gmail.com

I have a 2007 3.2 as well, built in fall of 2006. 6 years old and failing. I left the hi end audio on for 40 minutes and almost did not get started. I had the dealer test the battery ($40.) and was told the battery was on last legs (only 62 Amps).

So, I went shopping. I ended up talking to "Optima" who make the 6v yellow tops exclusively for VW. 1stvolkswagen parts have them, and I ordered one, but had the order cancelled because batteries have acid and are therefore Hazmat and cannot be shipped. I don't understand this because you can buy them at Amazon....and they ship.

I ended up buying at my VW dealership ($460). I considered the Red Tops but they are not "deep cycle"ans nixed the idea. Now, the install. I have changed batteries in many, many vehicles, but this one is no fun. I was told by VW that you can't just remove the old battery. You will loose all "the codes" and your can might not start. If so, you get your Eos towed to the dealership ($50-100) and pay $50 to get reprogrammed.

So, why not add a temporary battery the the connectors under the hood supplying 12v to keep the electronics alive while changing the 2-6 volters. I was warned not to do this because these front terminals DO NOT supply current to all vehicle electronics.

My solution not yet executed is to install a temporary 12v battery to the cables in the trunk and then remove/install the 6volters.

Now, I am NOT a senior tech person but above is my learned opinion and I am going to do it myself.
I wonder what the Bentleys service CD says about this.

...... Chili

[kratedisease]

I also did a lot of research and found that a desulfator battery charger made by optimate can bring the spiral cell AGM batteris back to life. This charger is specifically designed to recondition old or "dead" sulfated spiral cell batteries. The model you need is "Optimate 6" that is designed for spiral cell optima batteries. The optimate 6 charger can desulfate a old weak spiral cell battery back to new condition. I bought one and that is why I posted my question on how to remove the battery because I need to connect the optimate 6 to the batteries directly to recondition/desulfate them. I need to pop open the covers in the trunk but I do not know how to acess them. Once I do I am hooking up the charger so that I can desulfate the batteries. let me know if you know how to take the covers off in the trunk. I read that to charge/recondition the battery it is better to connect directly to battery terminals and not to use the jump start points in the engine bay. Let me know if you know how to take the covers off to acess the batteries. I will connect the cable supplied with my optimate 6 charger attached to the battery terminals permantly and just leave the cable attached since they have a female connector plug on the cable where i can periodically plug in the male charger cable from the charger if the battery gets weak and needs to be desulfated/recharged again. Let me know.. my direct email is beez75@gmail.com

[kratedisease]

I also did a lot of research and found that a desulfator battery charger made by optimate can bring the spiral cell AGM batteris back to life. This charger is specifically designed to recondition old or "dead" sulfated spiral cell batteries. The model you need is "Optimate 6" that is designed for spiral cell optima batteries. The optimate 6 charger can desulfate a old weak spiral cell battery back to new condition. I bought one and that is why I posted my question on how to remove the battery because I need to connect the optimate 6 to the batteries directly to recondition/desulfate them. I need to pop open the covers in the trunk but I do not know how to acess them. Once I do I am hooking up the charger so that I can desulfate the batteries. let me know if you know how to take the covers off in the trunk. I read that to charge/recondition the battery it is better to connect directly to battery terminals and not to use the jump start points in the engine bay. Let me know if you know how to take the covers off to acess the batteries. I will connect the cable supplied with my optimate 6 charger attached to the battery terminals permantly and just leave the cable attached since they have a female connector plug on the cable where i can periodically plug in the male charger cable from the charger if the battery gets weak and needs to be desulfated/recharged again. Let me know.. my direct email is beez75@gmail.com

[gerryc]

I also did a lot of research and found that a desulfator battery charger made by optimate can bring the spiral cell AGM batteris back to life. This charger is specifically designed to recondition old or "dead" sulfated spiral cell batteries. The model you need is "Optimate 6" that is designed for spiral cell optima batteries. The optimate 6 charger can desulfate a old weak spiral cell battery back to new condition. I bought one and that is why I posted my question on how to remove the battery because I need to connect the optimate 6 to the batteries directly to recondition/desulfate them. I need to pop open the covers in the trunk but I do not know how to acess them. Once I do I am hooking up the charger so that I can desulfate the batteries. let me know if you know how to take the covers off in the trunk. I read that to charge/recondition the battery it is better to connect directly to battery terminals and not to use the jump start points in the engine bay. Let me know if you know how to take the covers off to acess the batteries. I will connect the cable supplied with my optimate 6 charger attached to the battery terminals permantly and just leave the cable attached since they have a female connector plug on the cable where i can periodically plug in the male charger cable from the charger if the battery gets weak and needs to be desulfated/recharged again. Let me know.. my direct email is beez75@gmail.com

Good work Tiger.....But I'll not be reconditiioning.I have bought the new yellowtops....and did the install today. 2 hours, not simple, but dooable. And thanks to my dealer who are full of bunk. Why? I did loose 12v to the car and all I lost was correct Time of day and trip KMs. No car problems, no tow job, Car runs perfect.

Now, for your problem, here is the fix. The 2 batteries in the trunk are behind 2 covers that are retained by clips, one in each cover on the ends and hard to see unless you are looking for them.
you have to pry out the centre 'push in plug' and the cover then comes off easily.

here is a pic of the clip.
[img]desktop\16x9- 035.jpg[/img](not linked)
OK...how do you attach an image???
Pic emailed to you
good luck with the reconditioning.

..... Gerry

[just-jean]

I just changed my single 2.0T battery after 6 years and it started right up including the radio. I did have to relearn the pinch protection for the windows to fully go up.

The traction control light came on and one that looked like a steering wheel..... I was heading over my brothers to steal his vagcom cable to look at/clear the codes, and they went off as soon as I shifted. Don't be afraid to DIY!!

[gerryc]

Good work Tiger.....But I'll not be reconditiioning.I have bought the new yellowtops....and did the install today. 2 hours, not simple, but dooable. And thanks to my dealer who are full of bunk. Why? I did loose 12v to the car and all I lost was correct Time of day and trip KMs. No car problems, no tow job, Car runs perfect.

Now, for your problem, here is the fix. The 2 batteries in the trunk are behind 2 covers that are retained by clips, one in each cover on the ends and hard to see unless you are looking for them.
you have to pry out the centre 'push in plug' and the cover then comes off easily.

here is a pic of the clip.
[img]desktop\16x9- 035.jpg[/img](not linked)
OK...how do you attach an image???
Pic emailed to you
good luck with the reconditioning.

..... Gerry

Here is the Pic: (second attempt)

[kratedisease]

I am in NYCity. Yes all of the batteries were Yellow top VW batteries from the VW dealer. Here in USA only the VW have 6 volt yellow tops.You can only get yellow top 6 volt batteries ( VR6 EOS uses 2 in seris) from the VW dealer. Optima does NOT sell 6 volt yellow tops to anyone else.


The VW dealer service supervisor told me that the optima batteries have a incredibaly high " internal" failure rate. He told me that they have lots of problems with Optima factory yellow tops and that they are NOT reliable. Let me explain...


A internal battery failure is a battery that WILL ALLWAYS start a car engine BUT does NOT have "internal" power or strength.

So my car/engine would ALLWAYS start BUT I would persistantly have other issues. The windows would randomly NOT all go down together with the "all windows down" switch. The windows would also randomly NOT all go up with the same switch. One or two windows would just not move unless I waited a bit and repressed the window switch. Next and most obvious that the battery is bad is that the engine idle would stay at 1000 to 1200 RPMS. Normal RPM at idle is around 500R RPMS to 700 RPMS, but when the battery is bad internally the car will start every time BUT the car will idle abnormally high over 1000 RPM. This is because the car computer raises the idle since the computer sensor feels the battery needs to be charged since it will not hold the full voltage. ( a low voltage condition) . Then I had the windows "index feature" not work, even though the engine would always start and turn over. The window index feature is when the windows drop 1/2 inch when you open the door to get by the weather stripping. Well , when the battery fails internally the windows will not drop down and you cannot close the door fully because this is actually controlled by the computer ( and not by the window itself). Remember, my car ALWAYS started !!. You only need around 10 volts to start the car but any thing below 11 volts is a internal battery failure and that causes the computer to not work properly and cause all kinds of problems like I described above.


1st VW yellow tops lasted 2 years. 2nd set were bad after 3 months ( replaced under warranty). 3rd set arrived bad out of the box and were installed and then removed the same day by the dealer after they tested bad. My 4th set now seem ( I hope...fingers crossed) to be OK so far but I have only had them a month or two so far. ALL were Yellow tops installed by the VW dealer.


google "optima battery review" and you will see that many people are fustrated with how unreliable the spiral cells are.
Additionally once they are deeply discharged they rarely recover. That is what the dealer also told me and confirmed.
And optima's web site also says that once they are very discharged ( low voltage condition) they are hard to recover. I bought a red top optima back in 1995 to put in my corvette back in 1995 and what a piece of crap ! I thought that it would be a upgrade to switch to an optima back in 1995 when they first came out, and it was easily the worst battery I had ever had in the corvette. Never stronger than a convential battery and once I left the interior lights on by mistake over night the battery was good to throw out.

[chocoholic_too]

Did you use that charger yet? Did it work? I bought a Deltran battery tender junior a while ago and hooked up the connection lead with the eyelet terminals and then I put the covers back on. It seemed to take a couple of days at least to charge the battery to full. But last week I connected it just overnight to top it off and it was dead in the morning. No I wonder if I truly need new batteries or if maybe that charger you were talking about might do the trick a little while longer.
My battery went dead for the first time about 3 months after I bought my Eos brand new. I had it sitting for 2 weeks while on vacation. 6 months later it died again after 1 week beeing gone. 1 month later it died one day to the next and wouldn't start. Had it towed and they replaced the batteries twice. The first set was bad right out of the box. Since then I'd gotten a good jump starter and it died on me every time it sat for a few days.
Lately it's been going on after only 2 days or so of not driving it. But once I jump start it and drive to work, it seems to do just fine...until the next time.
Now I'm not sure if replacing the batteries might not solve anything. Maybe it's just a bad design. Maybe that's why they stopped making this model.

[mikemaan]

Doesn't look too hard to replace. The cheapest I could find the batteries was for $326 at 1stVWParts.com http://bit.ly/126TZRB. They have a parts explosion chart there too. [see pics below]

I highly recommend getting the Optimate 6 Charger. $85 on Ebay. It will bring your dead battery back to life and claims that with routine maintenance will add 400% longer life. http://www.tecmate.com/u_optimate_6.php

I noticed a big improvement with Optimate 6 and I hope it does what it says. BTW you can buy a similar device directly from Optima for $107.

I finally dove in to the trunk to reveal these babies. [see pix below] From what I researched, and I've spent away too much time doing so, Optima only sells these batteries to VW. There is no direct Optima part number. They are not even on the Optima website. DO NOT BUY the "Red Tops" they are not deep cycle and will not last.

Note:
Combined Cold Cranking Amps 1500.
Total Amp Hours 110
Combined Cranking Amps is 1740.
Combined Reserved Capacity is 240.
That's a lotta power!