Yesterday, 10:25 AM
I'm getting really frustrated with this situation and I'm hoping someone here has gone through something similar and can point me in the right direction. I've got a 2017 Infiniti Q50 that I've owned for about three years now, and it's been a fantastic car overall, comfortable, powerful, and really reliable up until recently. About a month ago, I started noticing that the car would occasionally hesitate when I pressed the start button, nothing major at first, just a slight delay before the engine fired up. I didn't think too much of it because I know these cars have a lot of electronics and sometimes they just take a moment to wake up. But then the stop-start system started acting up, sometimes it would work perfectly and other times it would just refuse to engage, and I'd get a message on the dash saying battery low. I figured maybe I wasn't driving the car enough, so I made a point of taking it for longer drives on the weekends to keep the battery charged. That seemed to help for a little while, but then last week the car just wouldn't start at all one morning. I got that horrible clicking sound and all the dashboard lights flickered, but the engine wouldn't turn over. I managed to jump start it using my wife's car and it ran fine for the rest of the day, but the next morning the same thing happened again. I took it to a local garage near my house and they tested the battery and told me it was completely dead and needed replacing, so I went ahead and got a new one fitted there and then. I thought that would be the end of my problems, but wouldn't you know it, less than two weeks later I went to start the car and it was completely dead again. I was absolutely furious because I'd just spent a decent amount of money on a new battery and I was back to square one. I went back to the garage and they tested the new battery and said it was showing low voltage already, which suggests that either they fitted a cheap battery that wasn't up to the job, or there's something wrong with the car's charging system that's killing the battery. I've been reading up on Infiniti forums and I've learned that these cars can be quite sensitive when it comes to battery issues. Apparently you need to use the correct specification AGM battery with the right cold cranking amps, and more importantly, you need to properly register the new battery with the car's battery management system so it knows how to charge it correctly. If you skip that step, the car will overcharge the battery thinking it's the old one, which ruins it in no time. I've also learned that there could be a parasitic drain somewhere, maybe a module that's not shutting down properly when the car is turned off, slowly draining the battery overnight. I'm not really confident going back to the same garage because they clearly didn't do a thorough job the first time, and I don't want to keep throwing money at this problem without getting a proper solution. I'm based in the Musaffah area and I've seen a few workshops around that claim to work on Japanese cars, but I'm a bit skeptical because I don't know which ones actually have the right diagnostic equipment and technical knowledge to properly diagnose and fix these electrical issues. I was searching online the other day and I came across a service offering the Best battery fitting for Infiniti models in Musaffah, which sounded promising, but I couldn't find any genuine reviews or firsthand experiences from real owners who've used them. What I really need is a recommendation from someone who's actually had their Infiniti battery replaced at a good independent shop in this area and can tell me about their experience. Did they use the correct battery, did they do the proper registration procedure, and did they check the charging system and look for any drains? I'm planning to get this sorted as soon as possible because I can't keep relying on jump starts every time I need to go somewhere, it's just not practical and it's making me really anxious every time I get in the car. If you've had a good experience with a battery specialist for your Infiniti in or around Musaffah, please share their details and let me know what they did for you. I'm willing to pay a fair price for quality work, I just want to avoid being ripped off or ending up with another cheap battery that fails within weeks.