How to replace the 12V battery on a BMW i3

[Music] all right so it's fully charged today is a cold day it's about 37 degrees outside and uh let's see what kind of mileage i get all right let's go here's the situation here's what happened a couple days ago i get into my i3 things is good things are good life is good i press the button to start like i usually do and i charge it to a hundred i get in the car and nothing again i mean at this time the key fob doesn't work nothing works so where are we now i think it's the battery i think it's a 12 volt battery so in this video i'm gonna go ahead and change out the battery and kind of go through the process and the reason why i want to document this is because you can't just swap a 12 volt battery so this is not the main battery on the i3 this is a 12 volt battery and you can't just swap it out without programming it so that's kind of weird where i have to program it there's the i3 sitting here can't go anywhere so you would probably ask yourself like where do you put the key like where does the key go and the answer is it's in this portion there's a special part here where you stick the key and it like pops off because usually you never use the key there's the key like where does it go but it goes here there it is so okay i get into the car and then i'm trying to pop the hood but of course the battery is dead so i get nothing so how do you pop the hood well just like any awesome toy it's got a secret compartment look at this thing there we go all right let's open this puppy up oh yeah so you're gonna need 25 and 30. torque 25 and 30 to get sides and bottom okay so let's take this thing out and here we go there's the battery right over there there it is and the first thing i need to do is disconnect it from the power that it is getting here's an important aspect you got to disconnect the battery uh by pressing this little lever here and pulling this down so that it's it's just it's uh disconnected here you got to pull this down so it's completely disconnected you are going to need a 10 millimeter ratchet all right very nice bracket very good there's the battery all right now i'm going to disconnect the negative terminal this is the negative terminal first it's it's nicely done the way that they did it it's actually pivoted upward which is pretty easy to work on okay i took the negative and positive terminals off there was no spark whatsoever which tells me the battery is indeed most likely dead it's just like when i change the batteries out and they're not that they usually give me some sign of life but this one seems to be caputo uh trying to see okay it's 12 volt 20 amp i can already see it all right i'm going to try to get it out of there and i know back there i got to be careful there's a vent there's some sort of a vent back there so i'm gonna be very careful so the vent was on the side in 2014 in mine the vent was on the side and it was actually really easy to remove it from there the vent itself is back here there it is it looks clean everything looks so clean in here i'm loving it this is i'm gonna have to yeah agm battery agm battery 20 amp power 300 amps cool so far so good oh yeah i got to take these off okay it looks like these are t30s same t30 as i was using before i do recommend getting a screwdriver like this it's so much easier i just forgot mine at home so i have to use these guys and it is a pain but anyway you got to take these off let's go [Music] oh it says on them right there it says negative negative and positive right there [Music] all right so that's how much i paid right there [Music] [Music] all right let's look at this thing see how it compares okay very similar very similar [Music] [Music] [Music] so it's pretty heavy i won't lie to you set it down right there so this little vent right here goes on the side of the battery it just goes just gorgeous okay i am carefully going to place this back in and connect the hose connect the terminals okay let's go videos [Music] i connected the hose and is over there i don't think you could see but there's the hose that's connected on the side it's pretty easy to do don't worry about it i'm sure you get it okay all right what's next terminals let's go for terminals okay putting the positive terminal now [Music] [Applause] now i'm gonna connect the negative um let me show you up close so both of these uh terminals there's one right there both terminals are back on no problem i can even close this little lid and invest it'll close but okay see what's going on on the inside all right will this thing even turn on oh my goodness oh that is so good to see oh oh that is amazing to see i am so excited drive train issues yeah of course high voltage system deactivated it is that's right okay i gotta keep going but at least it turns on i am so happy that i've gotten this far let's keep going [Music] that is great okay batteries installed there it is okay it's got a little button it's got a little button on there you gotta press and push yeah you basically you have to press that little button right there and then you press and push and it should say on uh right there it says no but it's actually on because it's upside down um but besides that i think i'm done um with the installation part the next thing is probably programming so let's take a look at what it says on the inside drivetrain malfunction okay stop carefully i could turn it off i mean it's a huge improvement because before i couldn't even press this button oh we're good we are good too and then there it is it's back oh gosh it's kind of a mess in here because oh i missed it i love the smell of this car okay i'm gonna press the brake i did not program anything let's see what it says oh my goodness it says ready it's ready that means i can drive it oh what a glorious day let's put it in reverse oh my goodness oh i'm driving in reverse oh what a glorious day my car is working again let's go forward so maybe i didn't have to program anything who knows [Music] [Music] okay so i just plugged in this foxwell uh into the bmw i3 the port um and let's go ahead and press this button okay so it's started up a little bit accessory selective now i think you go to let's zoom in now you go to bmw loading data um there can you see that and i press enter let's do smart reading i guess f3 completed yes okay the car just shut down it restarted [Music] okay please wait loading data okay something's happening let's go to service let's go to buddy ah there it is power supply battery battery register battery replacement okay register battery replacement let's do two i think you just have to go to two okay so it's the same capacity on the battery it's the same exact capacity it's 20 amp hour says 21 but it is the same so i'm just gonna press enter uh it's not no please wait okay it says so yeah it asked if it's an original bmw component i said no and let's see what happens now okay successful less better replacement let's see the correlation between the depth of charge and cycle life of the battery with difference with difference between 500 and 1300 cycle depending on the depth of charge yeah exactly um so basically the reason why we would program um in the bmw i3 the reason why for programming is more for if you are changing the battery type and you wanna change the voltage regulation um that i presume is going on in the i3 between lead asset and um the agm that's when you do it otherwise i didn't have to program anything i could have just gone about my business kept driving and everything i think would be fine but i like the fact that i did do it another good news is that there's a bunch of other options i would love to learn more about with that programmer there's a lot of cool stuff that you could do and i might make a video on it i don't fully know yet maybe if there's something interesting um if you know something that's interesting on there that i should try put a link or just tell me down below so that way i could go in there and you know try it out like i saw there was like audio there's a couple other things in there that i thought were pretty cool um i already use beamer code and it's pretty cool um i use some stuff uh but for you know what i saw on this programmer there's probably more stuff that i can do anyway that's a side note um either way this car is amazing um i'll do a full review i was actually getting some footage for that when the car died on me so pretty soon i'm gonna do like a full review of um what it's been like six months uh driving the i3 as a work vehicle okay well thanks for watching consider subscribing have a good one [Music] you

Channel: Lava Labs

Views: 44,099

Keywords:

Id: fsy1FKFGBgA

Length: 18min 34sec (1114 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 03 2021