Battery key on Fiat Ducato

An interesting question which I personally have not given much thought to.

My observations would be this. Battery disconnection for several days is often quite likely to happen when a vehicle is in the garage for extended service. With any disconnection of an hour or more then systems without non volatile storage will lose their settings.

I recently fitted a tow-bar to my Croma (2005) and had the battery disconnected overnight. I lost the clock and the electric window anti-pinch settings. The windows through a warning triangle on the dash but this was cleared by me taking the windows through their 'reset cycle'.

Also many car dealer show rooms have vehicles in there for weeks and sometime months on end. In every dealer I've ever visited these vehicles have tier batteries disconnected.

I personally would be tempted to do a trial battery disconnect for 24 hours and see what I have to reset etc... Then do it for a week. Then a month. If there are any issues then this should show them up.

To me, logically once a car is without power then all knowledge of time is lost so why a day, week, month or year should make any difference I don't know.

Suggest that if you are going to give the power disconnection for varying periods a trial then do it when you know you have a few days of recovery time should you have to visit your dealer.

Your only other option is to use a 'battery saver' charger. These can be mains or sun powered.

Nick /////

Thanks Nick for the very useful input. My logic is the same as your. It should not matter whether the battery is disconnected for 1 hour, 1 day or 1 month. I like the idea you suggested to try it out by disconnecting the neg. pole for a day and see what needs to be reset. If it only the clock than that's little to do. If it works I could install a battery key. If it doen'st work I always call in the road help services of Fiat.

Apparently this is a very quite newsgroup. Or nobody has any experiences with the subject.

See Nick and thanks again.

Dirk van Lut

After going to bed last night I did think of one possible reason for keeping the battery connected. It all depends if you have a service computer which has both mileage AND/OR days. My Stilo Abarth had mileage and days that counted up and down respectivly. If the day counter just counts lapsed 24 hour periods and does not work out days based on date then if the battery were disconnected for a month then you would be a month late for your 12 month service which could invalidate your warranty.

As a precuation while you experiment I would just note the dates you disconnect and reconnect the battery and factor the off time into you service schedule.

Nick /////