My Bug is Dead. Help!

[Lime Green Bug]

Okay to make a long story short my 2000 Beetle GLS is having problems starting. We recently took it to the Volkswagen dealership to have diagnostic tests run on it. The dealership said the only thing drawing a current in the car was the radio, so we took out the head unit. The car was last driven on Sunday evening and I went to start this morning (Thursday) and it was dead, didn't even want to think about starting. Th weather has been around freezing or below all week (unusual for Dallas), would that cause my car not to start? Could it be possible that a door or the back hatch was open but the alarm didn't go off - would that drain my battery? Any ideas what to do next?

[jdesigns]

How old is the battery?

[ilpotosino]

yep could be the battery

[Lnzbug]

yup... that would be my guess

[taterbug]

I agree with everyone here.... the batterys have a tendency to go without warning!!

[SilverSportNOLA]

Ditto .... my oem died in cold weather ... less than you have now, the second one the following year in cold weather also.

[STDave]

Would it jump start? My battery died without warning also and it wasn't near this cold.
Dave

[noR]

Battery hands down. Why the heck did the dealership not pick up on that? o_0

[Smileybug]

Speaking of the battery...mine is fine (for now anyway) but i've had the car for over a year and a half without replacing it...looks like a pain to replace though. Just wondering how hard it is to do (for future reference mainly).

[SilverSportNOLA]

It looks harder than it is. I didn't install mine the first time ... had Sears do it, cold, rainy long workday, second time I had to pay them to do it again ... because they replaced the battery for free. I have had it out a few times since the first replacement.

I got mine to jump start both times, but it took a while once.

The Beetle has a lot of electronics ... the battery does not charge at idle ... especially in the winter when you have the heater on, heated seats, heated mirrors, rear window defogger, windsheild wipers and the tunes cranked up ... sitting in traffic on the way to work probably discharges the battery slightly, and you should all know that in cold weather an engine requires more AMP's to turn over and start, and a battery delivers less juice.

[SMG]

Yeah, a shot battery for sure.

My battery is going on 3 years old soon and it's still ticking, but I'm putting it into cold storage on Tuesday and I figure that will finish it off if I don't feel like removing a battery that should be replaced soon regardless.

Just a tip for jump starting:

Some cars have rubber insulators around the bottom of the terminals so don't clamp onto those on one of the terminals and just be drawing from a single terminal. I watched a friend kill his battery this way, it wasn't fun.

SMG

[hako]

Reading the original post you can figure that 120 hours have elapsed since last then battery was used to when it failed to answer the call. The problem could be just a boot slightly open or a glovebox or even the immobiliser. The way to find out is to turn everything off, then measure how much current the system is drawing whilst it is asleep. Of course it could also be the cold weather reducing the capacity of the battery but I have no experience of that - our coldest temperature was plus 1.1 Centigrade (34deg F) recorded during WW2 at Garbutt by American air force weather men....and there is some question as to the accuracy of that due to the fact that it was recorded in the Sergeants Mess....
End of story is that to save a lot of hassles simply buy the biggest capacity battery that will fit. Sorry for the diatribe.