He Missed ONE Step Replacing His BMW Battery…

[00:00:00]All right, guys. Today we got a 2016 BMW 328i with a 2 liter in it. Got some headlights going crazy. There's a bit of a backstory here. Let's get into it.

[00:00:14]We came over here. Baby G's working on this thing. Headlights going, right? And the client says that the charging system, well, the notice that we originally got was charging system light came on >> after he put >> shortly [snorts] after the headlights were put in. All right. But to muddy the water a little bit, he had a battery replaced about a year ago. Never got it programmed in. We're going to talk about that in a second. Never got it programmed into the car until >> about a week ago.

[00:00:44]>> A week or so ago. And it didn't fix it.

[00:00:47]Well, okay. So, now we've got new headlights that are definitely not original. Come on in. Take a look at that. Who? No telling where that's from.

[00:01:00]So, did the headlights cause the problem? Because the headlights were supposedly put in and then the charging system light came on.

[00:01:05]>> We're going to get to that the crux of that. We go into the back and baby G's like, "We we got a little problem here."

[00:01:12]Let's walk back here. We got an LED light engine back here.

[00:01:17]So, but it's not there's no lights on on it. And we follow this over. The ground is hooked up, but the positive is not.

[00:01:26]You can see the back. This was already sitting out. The battery, you can see, looks fairly new. Of course, no telling, but in these cars, they always look new because they're pretty protected against elements.

[00:01:37]Let me show you the first step that we did. We're going to get to a lot of you are like, "Battery programming." We're going to get to that in a second, but let me show you something real fast. We went in.

[00:01:48]I'm kind of catching you up to where we're at. Go ahead. You got your You got your meter.

[00:01:53]Well, we can use the scope.

[00:01:55]>> Yeah, >> we scope or I got the meter right here.

[00:01:57]>> You got a meter there. And you know, now we would normally go back to the battery negative obviously.

[00:02:01]>> Doing a down and dirty test.

[00:02:03]>> But we're just doing something down and dirty. And that was about 122 earlier.

[00:02:07]Uh-oh.

[00:02:07]>> It just shut off. Got turned off. Back on. We timed out.

[00:02:12]>> Now we're at 1165. So, we're discharging right now. That's directly at the alternator. We're checking that.

[00:02:20]And I said, you know, let's take a look.

[00:02:23]Let's try something here because, you know, the the the information that we've got saying we put the headlights in and then the charging system light came on.

[00:02:31]And I'm like, that doesn't sound right to me. Let's get the maintainer. Let's fire it on.

[00:02:38]See, it's 115 is what the car is at right now.

[00:02:43]All right. Now we're Now we're going to charge it some by with the maintainer.

[00:02:47]Take a look at our lights. They were going nuts, nuts, nuts. Slowing down a little bit. Still got some craziness going on, but just give it a Let's give it a little minute here.

[00:03:03]>> Oh, and when they started doing this, it's like they're almost like blinking a code.

[00:03:12]>> Yeah. But then look now that one's on.

[00:03:15]Oh, they just >> Well, they're going on now.

[00:03:19]>> But they're they're getting to where they're not flashing so hard and and we got them to where they would just come on and stay on. All right.

[00:03:27]Well, that's not a headlight issue. Not not real happy with the headlights, whatever they are, but that's not a headlight issue. That's a charging system. That's a That thing does the lights don't have the voltage to them to make them happy.

[00:03:39]>> So, we can't go after headlight, you know. Here they are. Now they're on.

[00:03:41]They're solid now.

[00:03:42]>> Now they're on solid.

[00:03:45]Just we know the alternator is not charging.

[00:03:49]And and let's go ahead and let's test the alternator. Be sure that the engine module is doing what it wants to do with the at the alternator, making the alternator do what it needs to do. And if it is, then I'm going to tell you why this alternator is bad. We got the scope on it. You got the ground at the battery. Anytime you're scoping, you got the ground at the battery.

[00:04:09]We don't have screen record on this one.

[00:04:14]It's going into the control wire. Go to measure and deep record.

[00:04:20]And we can see right now without question. Go ahead and pause it. Zoom it.

[00:04:28]That is definitely got a good control going to the alternator.

[00:04:37]We've got a good control going to the alternator. The alternator just can't charge. The alternator's bad. Why is the al now? Now we can see when we get the proper voltage in the car. Even though listen, we're not happy with this. A lot of people would come in, they see a nice BMW like this and they see some aftermarket headlights, they be like, "Oh man, we got to get rid of that and all that." And yeah, we don't like that, but we're not going to condemn the headlights. The alternator is the problem. And the reason that the alternator is bad is because that battery was not programmed. We need to test that battery now. And people are going to say, "Well, why is the battery not being programmed? Going to kill the alternator." Well, what happens is when the when the original battery this system learns the battery and it learns the charge state of the battery and it start and it learns the how to charge the battery up and keep it at the at the correct charge without overcharging it.

[00:05:33]Over time that changes. So what happens is you put a new battery in it, the car has no idea you did that. It will continue to try to charge the new battery just like it did the old battery. And one of two things, well, one of three things is going to happen.

[00:05:49]You're either going to get a bad alternator here. You're going to get a bad battery.

[00:05:54]We don't know that yet. Or you're going to get both. Let's test the battery and see where we're at. We're going to test this thing with the old school load tester. Let's see if I'm right. Let's see if this battery test bad. Now, it is low. We're at 11.9.

[00:06:08]But we're going to give it a little leeway here, but we're going to the cold cranking amps on the battery is 900.

[00:06:13]We're going to take this up to 450. And we shouldn't see this thing. It's pretty hot out right now. What do you think it is? Like 95, 94, something like that.

[00:06:22]>> We're in the shade. Let's call it in the 80s. Probably we shouldn't see this thing go less than like 10 amps, we'll say. Or I'm sorry, 10 volts. [snorts] We'll give it to 9 volts because we're we're low already. All right, let's go ahead and do this. We're going to get this up to 450 and try to hold it there for about 15 seconds.

[00:06:40][snorts] 1 2 3 4 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15. All right. Well, I mean, it popped back up and it went down to about 9.2.

[00:06:59]I'm going to call it I think it might be okay. I mean, I don't know. I would feel way better about this situation if we can get a battery. But if they're going to give us a hard time about replacing it, we may charge it up. We'll program it in again just to be 100% sure. So Baby D's already said he doesn't trust the >> he doesn't trust the programming in it anyway. But it doesn't matter if you program one of these things in and you let the battery be in there for a year.

[00:07:25]Programming it now, it's too late. I mean, you pro you've damaged already stuff. You got to do that as soon as you replace the battery. It's not optional.

[00:07:33]Not something that you can just say, "Well, I don't want to do that on this."

[00:07:35]No, you got to do it. Let's see if the client wants to put the alternator in this car. Let's get the alternator in it. We'll get the charger on this battery. We'll get it charged up. We'll retest it a couple times. Let's be sure everything's good. And if it is, let's get the battery. Let's get the alternator in it. And let's see if this car will run good and the battery will be the the headlights will be good in it. Real quick, guys, make sure you watch to the end because we're going to show you how to program the battery into this vehicle. It's pretty simple, pretty straightforward. You might be surprised how easy it is. While you're here, do me a favor. Jump down there, hit that subscribe button, give us a thumbs up.

[00:08:06]Back to the video.

[00:08:08]>> The one guy was okay cuz like I said, he brought a bunch of Bucky stuff. So, he was excused.

[00:08:11]>> Bucky stuff.

[00:08:12]>> Yeah. He brought like a sandwich, jerky, and then he drove from Savannah, dropped off his other vehicle, went back up, and then the next week came back down, brought Chris Bucky stuff, and then went about Cool. Cool guy.

[00:08:27]>> Hey, Chris, what the guy bring you from Bies?

[00:08:32]bought you some barbecue sandwiches.

[00:08:40]>> They were pretty good.

[00:08:42]>> They were pretty good.

[00:08:45]>> Did you see how old uh Dolly Parton opened up a gas station? Big old gas station in Tennessee?

[00:08:50]>> I didn't see that. I haven't been back couple years.

[00:08:52]>> Well, I we didn't see it up there, but we saw like a some video one or somebody. It was on Facebook or something like that. Yeah. She said, "Can't let the beaver have everything.

[00:09:07]>> It's out."

[00:09:08]>> Hot.

[00:09:10]>> I'm just getting the number off.

[00:09:11]>> Oh, no.

[00:09:15]>> Here we go. Well, luckily we got our parts guy standing right there. Got him a little fan going. Let's go over and talk about our parts guy over here. See what this situation's all about.

[00:09:23][snorts] >> What are these here? Oh, these this >> I have no idea what he's doing with it.

[00:09:28]>> Oh, those are just caps.

[00:09:30]>> You had his box cleaned off really good before.

[00:09:32]>> Oh, I did 100%. I did. And then what a week and a half. Now it's back to looking like this.

[00:09:39]>> I mean, you had this thing pristinely cleaned off%. It look brand new. I even cleaned the sides of it, >> man.

[00:09:46]>> In the front.

[00:09:50]>> And yet that's how you treat them.

[00:09:51]That's how he's treating them >> here. They're coming from World Pack and World Pack comes between 10 and 11.

[00:09:59]>> It's a big range.

[00:10:00]>> It is. I don't I've been I've been down this road with them for 3 months now.

[00:10:07]>> What was the road you've been down?

[00:10:08]>> I don't think they can hear him.

[00:10:09]Probably >> called our I called our rep.

[00:10:13]>> Yeah. [laughter] >> Sir, what is your experience there?

[00:10:16]>> I've called our rep.

[00:10:17]>> Yeah. for the past three months, probably a little bit longer, about the late delivery times and the non-consistent delivery times, and all he says is, "I'll email my boss."

[00:10:28]>> Yeah. We've been dealing with them for years on this. I talked to the president of the company one time. I mean, straight to his face at a at a training event. Really?

[00:10:36]>> And he said, "Well, what warehouse are you out of?" And and all this and and I told him Jacksonville and everything. He said, "Oh, yeah. We've had trouble there." I'm going to see if I can't make that happen. Well, >> he can't make it happen. Guess who can't make it happen?

[00:10:48]>> Not Ken.

[00:10:48]>> Me and you. It's not Ken anymore. Ken.

[00:10:50]Ken tried his darnest. Ken was great.

[00:10:52]>> Steve.

[00:10:53]>> Steve. I've never talked to Steve. Ken was the guy I dealt with for years, but he retired.

[00:10:57]>> He did.

[00:10:57]>> A lot of times it's out of the their hands. Even Even Steve, it's out of his hands.

[00:11:01]>> Well, if it's if the president of the company can't make it happen, >> I don't think anybody [snorts] can.

[00:11:06]>> But here we are waiting.

[00:11:07]>> Here we are on the wait. Always.

[00:11:09]>> Baby J's got the alternator in it. All good. It actually was the lower amperage alternator that was in this vehicle.

[00:11:15]He's got it all bolted in. Battery's all charged up, good to go. Keys on right now. We're set. We got the top dawn hooked up. Let's jump into showing you how to program the battery into the vehicle. So, whether you put a new battery in there, first of all, let's walk back to the battery and let me show you what information you need off the battery. You're going to need to know the amp hours of the battery. So, if you look on this, you'll see cold cranking amps, things like that. But if you come over here, you'll see 95 amp hours. That's the number that you need when we go to put this program this battery in. If you get a battery that's a different amp hours, you're going to need to go in here and change the battery to whatever amp hours you're putting in. Now, BMW only offers a few different options here. And you remember, they're thinking you're going to them to buy the battery. So, if you buy an aftermarket battery, it might have a little different amp hours to it.

[00:12:05]You need to get the one that's as close as possible to the one you're putting in here. All right. Now, let's go in to the scanner.

[00:12:11]And we're going to go, we just got the dongle hooked up, keys on. Go to BMW.

[00:12:20]Automatically search. We're just going to, you know, grab what kind of vehicle this is. Let it search for the VIN and decode it for us.

[00:12:27]And I'm sure there's several different ways of doing this and getting to what you need. Here's our some vehicle information. Hit next.

[00:12:36]All right. Here we are at the topology screen. If we come up here to special function, click on special function and then you see right there battery modification and battery replacement.

[00:12:47]Let's click on that. All right. Battery change, register battery exchange. So, if you're going to change the battery that's in it, if you're going to put a different size battery, a different type of battery, a different amp hour battery in it, you need to go to battery change. If it's got the correct amp hour battery, you're changing it with the same one that came out of it. Then you're going to go register battery exchange. They said that it was already programmed. So, let's go ahead and go to this and it should tell us what's in it.

[00:13:18]Display distance reading at last battery exchange and one before last. Let's check that and let's see how far it's been.

[00:13:34]Okay.

[00:13:38]Okay. So, we've got a 95 in it. There's a 90 here. And it was just done at 150,770 km. What are we on this thing right now?

[00:13:48]>> 93,000 miles.

[00:13:50]>> 93,000 miles. What is that in, in our kilometers or kilometers?

[00:13:56]Is it kilometers or kilometers?

[00:14:04]Don't sign in.

[00:14:07]Okay.

[00:14:09]Is it okay? Thank you, Google. Uh 149,000 km.

[00:14:16]>> So, pretty d So, somebody just did this and he said it was, you know, week or so ago or a week before. We don't know how long. Maybe a couple weeks ago, something like that. The 90 amp hour that's in here is going to be the closest one to the 95 that's in the vehicle. I will tell you, you know, from experience with BMWs, we know that they tend to go what 80 90 is there 100, I think, or something or 110 or something on some >> some of the older ones.

[00:14:40]>> Yeah. So, we know this is going to be the closest one. And that's what I'm telling you on a lot of the aftermarket batteries, they're going to be a little different. Just grab the one closest.

[00:14:47]So, we wouldn't want to put an 80 in here, you know, on here and it be a 95 in the car. So, this has already been done. And and let me tell you this also.

[00:14:56]The fact that this battery has been programmed a year after it was put in is not perfect world here. This should be done as soon as you put the battery in the car. I honestly do not know how this going to affect the car. The battery test good. We charged the battery up.

[00:15:13]You know, we're going to have to monitor this thing and just see how it works out because normally we would put a battery in this car when we did this alternator, but we're trying to save him some money on this one. We'll find out. Hey, leave a comment down below and let us know.

[00:15:24]Have you done these things and had this kind of situation and it gone bad or gone good? I would love to know that.

[00:15:28]Let's start it up now. Let's go ahead and exit out of this. Go ahead and just completely exit out of everything. All right, let's start it up and let's see what the uh headlights do. Well, they're on now.

[00:15:40]He had the maintainer on it because we were programming doing that. Obviously, you got to maintain. The maintainer is off now.

[00:15:48]>> So, those things were were yellow before. I don't know if you guys saw this, but come in here.

[00:15:56]It says here yellow and white light switching mode. High beam flashes five times as white light blinking high beam six times to yellow. I'm thinking what they're saying is you can blink the high beam six times and they'll turn yellow.

[00:16:11]Want to try it? I don't know. This some I mean we're you know see what we got here.

[00:16:21]>> I went seven. Nothing changed.

[00:16:23]>> Didn't do it. I don't know.

[00:16:24]>> Okay. Wow.

[00:16:26]>> Oh, what did you do?

[00:16:28]>> That's just turn signal.

[00:16:28]>> Huh? That was just turn signal.

[00:16:30]>> Oh, that's turn signal. Yeah. Oh, well, maybe that was the turn signal that was on some kind of funky thing with that.

[00:16:34]>> Yeah. Anyway, it's not blinking. It's good. We checked the charging system.

[00:16:38]You already did that.

[00:16:39]>> I have not yet.

[00:16:40]>> Just do a quick check on it. Let's just be sure it's good.

[00:16:44]>> Always double check yourself just to be sure. And and this is a down and dirty test with the meter. Obviously, you know, when you're first doing your testing, you're going to want to be sure that you're doing the proper test, but we know it's good now.

[00:17:00]Car's fixed. All right, guys. You know what to do. Jump down there. Hit that subscribe button. Hit that bell notification, give us a thumbs up, leave a comment. I want really to hear your comments on if you've programmed a battery after it's been in there a while and how that's turned out for you. I would love to read those. Please do.

[00:17:15]Appreciate you watching. We'll see you in the next one.