LS430Lexus

Does the LS460 have battery issues that are similar to the LS430? Issues such as keeping the battery charged when the car sits for week or so, needing to connect a "battery maintainer" if you are only taking short trips or suspected parasitic draws that cannot be located. I'm getting a 2016 AWD with 10k miles, Atomic Silver with black leather and the cold weather package.

If it does have these issues, it's ok. I am used to dealing with them. I am just curious. Thanks.

Dean2

Post I wrote earlier. Hope it helps.

In addition to high temperatures killing batteries prematurely, leaving cars sit and letting the battery drain down then recharge, dramatically shortens battery life, no matter what kind it is.

In order to understand how quick this happens on our heavily computerised cars I thought, I would run the test on my 2015 LS460 SWB AWD. I started with a quality Multimeter that has both DC and AC current(AMP) measuring capacity. You put the black lead into the common port, and the Red lead into the 10A port, may also be labelled just AC/DC A on some meter. Having Alligator clips on the end of the probes will make doing this a whole bunch easier.

I shut off the car, put the key FOB in the house in an RFID box, left the doors unlocked, and lifted the hood. My car does not have a hood open warning light so no hood open sensor that needs to be defeated. I disconnected the negative terminal on the battery, clipped the Red Lead to the battery terminal and the black lead to the Negative cable. I then opened and closed the drivers door. Reading popped to 4.8 amps with the interior lights coming on. Closed the drivers door, reading dropped to 2.7 amps and after about 30 seconds started to steadily drop. Within 90 seconds it was down to .7 amp and still dropping. Within three minutes it was reading between .03 and .04 amps, so 30 to 40 Miliamps.

I had read that the FOB being too close would cause the vehicle to wake up so I went in the house and got the FOB. Even right beside the car, not change in .03-.04 AMPs being drawn. Used the FOB to open the trunk, reading popped up to 6 Amps. Closed the Truck with the auto close system using the button on the trunk lid, reading stayed at 5-6 AMPs. As soon as the trunk latched the AMPs dropped to 2.5 and then kept dropping following the same pattern above. I tried a number of different combinations and permutations, including putting the push button start in the run position without stepping on the brake so the car didn't start. Remember, your multimeter is limited to 10 AMPs, if you start the car, or turn on high draw things like Headlights, you will likely pop the fuse that protects the multimeter.

No matter what combinations I tried, the at rest reading dropped back to the 30 to 40 miliamp reading. The only thing I didn't do that I wish I had done, was lock the doors and see if the at rest reading increased with the security system active. Since I park in a secure garage and never lock the car, I didn't think about that till I had it all buttoned up again.

Since the car sits for long periods of time I have attached a NOCO harness to to the battery terminals to make hooking up the trickle charger much easier. This way I can just plug the trickle charger in without having to remove the clips and lift the battery cover each time to attach alligator clips. I have these quick connects on all my vehicles. Even at only 40 Miliamp, a battery will drop below starting voltage in about a month, if it is stored cold it will go flat faster than that. Remember, lead acid batteries do not like to be discharge down to 11 Volts and recharged. They are much happier and last far longer if kept above 12.3 volts and that means a trickle charger is a good idea if you don't drive your car for at least 30 minutes every 3 or 4 days.

Hope this information helps those of you suffering from batteries going flat or dying prematurely.


















Multimeters have a lot of different layouts, this is just for illustration.













As a followup, Charged the battery to full, after an hour off the charger, read 12.73. July 2023 OEM Lexus battery. After sitting in the garage un-driven for 8 days, battery now reads 12.45. So the constant drain, even though very small, definitely draws down the battery over time. Battery went from 100% to 80% in 8 days. Still lots of juice to start the car. Left parked with no trickle charger, and assuming an even rate of drain the battery will be down to 50% in another 12 or so days.

At 12 Volts it is still enough to start the car but this is NOT what lead acid batteries like and will materially decrease its service life. If you aren't driving the car regularly your battery will last far longer if you put it on a .75 AMP to 2 AMP smart trickle charger like a Noco. The other option is to disconnect the negative battery during storage, but I find it a lot easier just to leave it on the trickle charger.


You can use the quick connect cable on the jump start terminals as well, they don't have to go on the battery itself. The reason I put them on mine was so I don't have to remove any of the under hood covers or the battery cover to hook up alligator clips each time I wanted to put the trickle charger on. On my LS you can't reach the battery terminals without opening the battery cover by the windshield.

Here is a picture of the LS460 Battery location. The panel with the Yellow sticker has to be removed at min to get alligator clips onto the battery.

Lance460

This is one of the most comprehensive responses ever. Thank you for sharing all this great info.

LS430Lexus

Very good information, seems similar although a little better than the LS430. I use similar methods to keep the LS430 charged. Plugging in a battery maintainer from time to time, using quick disconnects and always having my charged Noco jump starter in the trunk. Also, your comments and chart seem to explain the battery "falling off the cliff" phenomena when a seemly good battery goes dead.

Does anyone notice a difference in the brand of battery, from a run of the mill Duracell AGM or Costco AGM to an expensive X2 Premium AGM? Thank you for your detailed response and helpful information.

R Z

All my Lexus batteries came from AutoZone. They offer 3 options and I went with the middle. They last a good 3-5 years. And in some cases, if it did die in that 3rd year or even 4th, they prorated the battery towards the price of a new one.

Dean2

In Canada no one beats Costco's Battery warranty on their Kirkland Batteries. It Is 48 month full replacement, then prorated to 100 months. AGM is full replace to 60 months, prorated to 100. Our LSs are configured for lead acid, that is what I use in them. On top of that, the AGM batteries are significantly more expensive and they do not last enough loner than lead acid to justify the extra cost. Like I said before, the thing that kills batteries the fastest is high heat. It kills AGMs almost as fast as lead acid. It is why the battery warranties in the States are so much shorter than up here, they have to consider Texas, Arizona and Florida.

Gerf

I'm surprised that Wyoming has that extreme cold area.

LS430Lexus

Do most of you use traditional lead acid or AGM? In the LS430, I had better luck with the AGM. I live a mile from my office so alot of short drives.

Nospinzone

I've only used a lead acid battery. I am currently on my third one, which is pretty good for almost 17 years. To answer your original question, I recently had my car sit a full 15 days with the alarm set and it started right up.

Striker223

I have tenders for the cars due to owning the LS430/460, I ran AGMs on the 430 but the 460 appears to be doing fine with a 7 year old standard cell. It's my wife's car now though so it's driven 50 miles a day or so....

I will replace it with an AGM when it fails though, my Audis both had factory AGMs when I bought them that I replaced out of fear due to how old they were. However both cars can sit for 2 months no issues so it was probably fine

Marc780

Short drives are an additional reason to use a trickle charger, which I do. The Lexus stays in the garage most of the time and I mostly use my 2002 Camry for short trips (the car the Lexus was supposed to replace, but since there was nothing wrong with it except for peeled paint and 200k miles, there was no reason not to keep it).

I tried many trickle chargers before settling on the simple one from Harbor Freight. I know that one works because I used it to keep up the battery on my mom's 1999 Mercedes C class that was rarely driven, for years and it never failed me. Attach the clamps, plug it in, and forget it.
I tried fancier trickle chargers, but never found one I could trust. Instructions tended to be poor, and on many of them it is just too easy to press the wrong button, pick the wrong setting, or do something else wrong, and then you find out later the hard way, the battery charger you thought was keeping up your battery, was in fact doing no such thing, and has been providing 0 voltage to the batt the entire time. Never had this problem with the very simple H.F. trickle charger. It is probably no good for charging a dead battery, so I wouldn't even try; I already have another "real" battery charger for that anyway.

https://shorturl.at/jorvF

The one I use is the "Cen-tech 12v automatic battery maintainer" on sale right now for $8.99; and a simpler trickle charger would be hard to find anywhere. I just installed it all semi-permanently under the hood keeping the clamps on the battery terminals all the time, used a few zip ties to hold the hardware in place and ran the power cable through the grill.
The only tricky part to the whole thing is remembering to unplug the charger before driving off!

jmcraney

So, here is a good question for everyone: How do you decide it's time to replace your battery? Do you just wait until your car doesn't start. Or do you have some other criteria?

Striker223

I load test them aka strip the surface charge and check volts/amps, if it falls below 20% off new I no longer trust it.

The deceptive thing is batteries can maintain relatively high amps/starting current but be down to a quarter or less actual amp hours capacity. So it will "start fine" but then "randomly" die, if you ever flatten a battery this problem becomes worse. You really never want to cut more than 20% into your charge, the reason car batteries are so "large" vs what is actually needed to kick over is because they are trying to keep them in that range for lifespan.

Lexus uses way too small of a battery for the LS in my opinion. These need an H7 or H8 class cell.....

In theory you can use lithium cells but those can flame up if you don't have a proper controller and overall power capacity per dollar is very low. Weight/Engel density is high though so you can shave 30-50lb off the car.

jmcraney

Are you testing every day, once a week, month, year, or just when you have some indication there may be a problem?

Dean2

A bit of an update to my post above. Have had the LS460 on a battery tender all winter. Car hasn't been driven for about 35 days, prior to unplugging the tender. Took it off two weeks ago as I was going away and didn't want to plugged in while I was gone. Got back, measured the battery voltage, still at 12.67 after 14 days just sitting.

So the good news is, for longer term sits the car must go into a deeper sleep than what I was first measuring. Once it has sat un-driven for a month or so, the draw must drop to nearly nothing as 12.67 is virtually a fully charged battery. If the draw had remained at even 40 Milliamps, it would have drawn it down more than that.

So a battery in good condition, and a car stored in heated indoor storage, no alarm armed, appears to be able to sit for very l;ong periods of time without flattening the battery.