Heated front windscreen and battery

[Paulies]

Hi

On the coldest day of the year I jump in the car and the heated windscreen or heated seats don’t work I know from reading in here it’s probably the BMS, I did plug in forscan and looked at the battery statistics for which I have attached screen shots. My question is is there actually a problem or is it fords systems and low battery?. The one thing I have noticed not sure if it will make a difference but in forscan the battery listed is not the battery fitted to the car and there isn’t an exact option for the battery I have.

I did alter the the battery type to the battery I thought it was then I got BATT_STATE_DET Out of Range so I changed it back the the exact same setting still get the Out Of Range but now the the charge level is 90% and actually rising and the front screen and sears work again.

I did reset the bms think it might solve the problem hence the battery age.
Paul

[andypsp]

have you checked the fuse ?

[Paulies]

Don’t think it’s a fuse issue since as I changed the battery section to a different type of battery and back again everything included stop start started working again, I have attached pictures before and after. The only problem it’s created if it is a problem it says out of range on the battery.

[alexp999]

The heated screens put a huge load on the battery and if the charge level is too low then they will not work, that is by design.

[unofix]

The battery State Of Charge has to be at least 70% for the heated screen and other high demand equipment. The default charging state of you car will have been set at 80% which is normal for your model. Using FORScan you can adjust the SOC and set it at 95%

Fully recharge your battery with a smart charger for 12 hours and with the SOC set at 95% it should keep everything working for most of the winter. You may still have to give the battery a top charge every couple of months.

[Tizer]

A lot of our battery capacities are showing to be a lot less than they are in FORScan. I don't think anyone knows definitively what effect changing them to the actual size or a larger or smaller size makes, I would love to know.

Regarding the Heated Screen, my battery SOC is only in the 50's at the moment and I'm sure my Heated Screen did not work last week either, but I have found that if you press the Max Defrost in the Automatic Climate Control, which I presume you have on your Vignale, then everything does work as intended. Either that or my SOC has risen considerably in the past few days, which I doubt because I have not done much mileage recently.

[Paulies]

17 minutes ago, Tizer said:

A lot of our Battery capacities are showing to be a lot less than they are in FORScan. I don't think anyone knows definitively what effect changing them to the actual size or a larger or smaller size makes, I would love to know.

Regarding the Heated Screen, my Battery SOC is only in the 50's at the moment and I'm sure my Heated Screen did not work last week either, but I have found that if you press the Max Defrost in the Automatic Climate Control, which I presume you have on your Vignale, then everything does work as intended. Either that or my SOC has risen considerably in the past few days, which I doubt because I have not done much mileage recently.

Thanks for the reply, i actually tried to change the different type of battery and the charge went from 65 to 80 and not knowing  what might happened I changed them back to the settings they were originally set and the battery charge went to 90 my soc is set to 95 very strange. Eveything now works which is brilliant even stop start not that I like it.

And to answer the question about the heated screen I did push the max button  and nothing happened apart from the blower speeding up.

 

 

 

[Tizer]

45 minutes ago, Paulies said:

i actually tried to change the different type of battery and the charge went from 65 to 80 and not knowing  what might happened I changed them back to the settings they were originally set and the battery charge went to 90 my soc is set to 95 very strange.

That is what I thought, it does not follow any logic and the jury is still out on what it actually does.

48 minutes ago, Paulies said:

And to answer the question about the heated screen I did push the max button  and nothing happened apart from the blower speeding up.

That is strange, I did the same this morning and everything came on, Front and Back Screens, PTC Heater, Blower at Max and even the Heated Seats, which are something that I never use. 

[ian1gail]

Are heated seats on the same regime where they only work if the battery is in a good state?

[Tizer]

1 minute ago, ian1gail said:

Are heated seats on the same regime where they only work if the battery is in a good state?

I don't know because I never feel the need to use them but they did come on this morning with Max Defrost, maybe my battery is being sensed as more charged than I think it is.

I'm sure someone who does use them will give you an answer.

 

[unofix]

5 minutes ago, ian1gail said:

Are heated seats on the same regime where they only work if the battery is in a good state?

It depends on the model and on the year. On newer models yes, but for a 2013, I would suspect not.

[Paulies]

51 minutes ago, Tizer said:

That is what I thought, it does not follow any logic and the jury is still out on what it actually does.

That is strange, I did the same this morning and everything came on, Front and Back Screens, PTC Heater, Blower at Max and even the Heated Seats, which are something that I never use. 

Suppose I have to be happy everything is working just wish I understood it more why changing one setting and back again fix the issue 🤔

[Wino]

Intresting reading and it's still not clear what the parameters mean regarding the SOC and as to what will work and what won't.

Our Focus now only gets used 3 times a week for a 2 mile trip and once a week it goes on a longer run to the supermarket which is about 7 miles away ( There is actually 2 others within half a mile ov our front door) , so that's roughly 20 miles a week with the aircon on auto and the heated seats on everytime it gets used now the weather is cooler ( both the aircon and heated seats are on 1).

So far with the past two days being frosty the Focus has been used as I couldnt get into my work car as the doors were frozen up and everything has worked as it should. Heated front screen, rear window and outer mirrors all defrosted in a minute or so, again heated seats and aircon on.

Last time I checked with Forscan the SOC is set at 90% and was at 65% but this was way back prior to the summer so in reallity I have no idea what the present SOC actually is but regardless everything is working.

One thing I will add though, is that when I came out ov work earlier this evening the inside ov the windscreen was soaking wet to the point where I got out and had to wipe it with a microfibre cloth I have in the boot, so no change from the MK3 to the Mk4 there then 🙄

 

[Paulies]

9 minutes ago, Wino said:

Intresting reading and it's still not clear what the parameters mean regarding the SOC and as to what will work and what won't.

Our Focus now only gets used 3 times a week for a 2 mile trip and once a week it goes on a longer run to the supermarket which is about 7 miles away ( There is actually 2 others within half a mile ov our front door) , so that's roughly 20 miles a week with the aircon on auto and the heated seats on everytime it gets used now the weather is cooler ( both the aircon and heated seats are on 1).

So far with the past two days being frosty the Focus has been used as I couldnt get into my work car as the doors were frozen up and everything has worked as it should. Heated front screen, rear window and outer mirrors all defrosted in a minute or so, again heated seats and aircon on.

Last time I checked with Forscan the SOC is set at 90% and was at 65% but this was way back prior to the summer so in reallity I have no idea what the present SOC actually is but regardless everything is working.

 

 

So you barely drive yours and everything worked i don’t do huge mileage about 400 mile a week most of it is on the motorway at steady 70.

 

I’ll keep following posts and someday some one might find an answer 😂.

Out of curiosity I’m going to check mine in a week to see if the battery has gone up or down.

 

[Wino]

10 minutes ago, Paulies said:

So you barely drive yours and everything worked i don’t do huge mileage about 400 mile a week most of it is on the motorway at steady 70.

Yes, that's correct. The furthest trip it's been on is to Manchester Airport at the start ov November where it stood there for a week and then we had the return journey obviously which would be roughly 100 mile round trip. 

[Tizer]

59 minutes ago, Paulies said:

So you barely drive yours and everything worked i don’t do huge mileage about 400 mile a week most of it is on the motorway at steady 70.

400 Miles a week is more than enough to keep the battery charged to whatever level the SOC is set to and it won't charge quicker by driving on the Motorway. If you connect up FORScan and log the speed as well you will see what I mean.

[Wino]

9 hours ago, Tizer said:

400 Miles a week is more than enough to keep the Battery charged to whatever level the SOC is set to and it won't charge quicker by driving on the Motorway. If you connect up FORScan and log the speed as well you will see what I mean.

I've said a few times it's not just about the long miles, it's also to do with key cycles. The turning ovv and on ov the car itself.

[Eric Bloodaxe]

4 hours ago, Wino said:

I've said a few times it's not just about the long miles, it's also to do with key cycles. The turning ovv and on ov the car itself.

Indeed. Never managed to figure this out. I've done several hundred miles in a day and then found the "systems off to save battery warning" next morning 

Yesterday, with some trepidation, went to start the car not having used it in a week, left outside in sub-zero temperatures. Not only fired up the instant I touched the button, heated front/rear screens  worked. I normally disable start/stop but didn't bother as I thought  "no way that's going to work" but first set of lights, it did!

[Wino]

1 hour ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

Indeed. Never managed to figure this out. I've done several hundred miles in a day and then found the "systems off to save battery warning" next morning 

Yesterday, with some trepidation, went to start the car not having used it in a week, left outside in sub-zero temperatures. Not only fired up the instant I touched the button, heated front/rear screens  worked. I normally disable start/stop but didn't bother as I thought  "no way that's going to work" but first set of lights, it did!

Exactly, we did the usual Skegness and back in the day (160 miles) to see the Father in law and ours was the same never worked all the way there and back and was reading 14.6v on the gizmo. Following morning it was reading 14.2v lol. Stop start kicked in after 500m when I stopped at the first junction and then again at the traffic lights. So much for it not working on a cold engine 😄

[Paulies]

Just a quick question I have 2 options in my BdyCM 1 BMS/Auto stop start and 2 BMS Configuration would disabling these make a difference?

[unofix]

I'm sure it would make a difference but most likely not the results you would be wanting.

Resetting or altering the BMS is not something I'd recommend. Changing the battery SOC to 95% and not using the Stop/Start system should be sufficient to keep an already fully charged battery in decent condition.

Nothing you can do will 100% fix the problem that over time - little by little -, the SOC of your battery will decrease as the Smart charging system is unable to keep up with the high load demands during winter.