nopcbs

Recently bought a 2008 RX400h that is 3 years old with 18,000 miles. I had it trucked to me from a Lexus dealer who had been storing it for a couple of weeks in their basement.

The car would not start when the truck arrived at my house. It had to be "jumped". I then charged the battery (the 12V mini-battery) and it again would not start the next day w/o a jump. It did this a total of 3 times in the first day we had it. After each jump, I charged the battery. It came up to charge quickly...an hour or two.

It has been over a month now and the start failure has not repeated.

I recently bought a Solar battery tester and just tested the battery. It reads 12.01 V (consistently, engine off) and 270 CCA. I don't know what the CCA is suuposed to be (no label on battery), but 270 CCA seems low and so does 12.01V. I tested two other batteries I have on my bench (big sealed gel batteries for BMW and MB), one 9 years old and one brand new and both read 12.45 V and >>600 CCA.

I am going to have a Lexus shop check the battery in two weeks. I was curious, however, what voltage reading is normal for an RX400h 12V battery with engine off. Anyone know?

Thanks.

- nopcbs

RX330inFL

CCA = cold cranking amps

For reference, my Duralast Gold 24F from AutoZone is rated at 750 CCA.

lydiamight

The voltage is certainly a bit low, but don't worry about the cold cranking amps as the 12 volt bateery is used solely to fire up the computer and does not actually "crank" the engine.

nopcbs

I would not worry about the 270 CCA (as you say it does not run the starter), but that is very low and combined with the low voltage reading, I think that there is a bad cell in the battery. There has to be some reason why it failed to start 3 times like that.

- Geo