pagpc

my 2007 4.2 Q7 needed a new battery. has 100489 miles and is 8.5 years old. only serviced by audi.

wow: it was still the original. good news.

wow: it is under the driver's seat which has to be removed to replace the battery. bad news. what was audi thinking?

peter

D3Audi

Surprisingly most newer luxury SUVs have the battery located under the seats in the interior, some vehicles like the Q5 are in the trunk. I just replaced my battery 2 weeks ago and honestly the hardest part was tracking down the stupid metric 12 point triple square socket. Got it at Walmart. The replacement is very straight forward. And the driver seat doesn't need to be removed, Just the 2 front bolts in the front of the seat that connect the seat to the floor are removed so you can lift the chair up to give you room. And once the driver seat is tilted back, it's the same as if you were replacing a battery if it was under the hood.

Clues

My OEM battery also died this past week. 9 years, 145k miles. Not bad at all. I had the battery tested in November and it checked out fine so the recent cold weather and age must have killed it quickly. For those interested, I changed the battery myself in about 45 minutes - plus 30 minutes of reading various on-line DIY posts and videos. The most helpful post is over at audiforums.com. Here are some highlights:

1) CT Audi dealer wanted to charge me $500 ($260 battery/misc parts, 1.5 hours labor @ $135/hour, plus tax)

2) I bought a Duralast Platinum (AGM) H8 (same as Group 49 size) for $175 from Autozone. I would have preferred an Interstate battery but could not find one locally. AGM batteries do need to vent. Most batteries come with two vent holes on each end of the battery. You need to plug the one on the positive side of the battery using the plastic plug that is attached to the the '+' terminal shipping cap. You need to insert the existing vent tube into the vent hole on the '-' side.

3) I needed to order a 10mm XZN/M10 triple square driver from Amazon to remove the two bolts holding down the front of the driver seat. No local auto parts stores stock this bit... Apparently VW/Audi are the only ones who use this bolt - grrrrr.

4) I hooked up a portable battery jump starter to the posts under the hood to maintain power to the car during the swap.

5) You do NOT need to remove the any bolts from the rear of the driver seat. There are a few videos and posts that instruct you to do so. You only need to remove the rear plastics rail covers. The rear seat rail is hinged so once you remove the two bolts in front, the entire seat will tilt back far enough for you to access the battery compartment. With that said. the hardest part of the entire operation is lifting the 55lb battery out of the compartment at an angle to clear the tilted seat. I managed to do it by myself - but it was not easy. If you were to remove the entire seat, that part would be easier but then you'd need to disconnect some wire harnesses that connect the car to the seat. Choose your poison.

6) Removing the battery air filter cover is a bit tricky. The front clips are very accessible and can easily be disconnected. The rear clips are wedged in pretty tight - so take visual note of the design of the front clips and then you can figure out how to get your finger behind the battery compartment to unclip the rears without actually seeing the clips.

7) Lastly, there is some debate over whether your car need to be reprogrammed to acknowledge the new battery. There are many who have changed their batteries without re-coding and have not reported problems. But others say that the unadjusted charge rate will potentially damage a new battery over time. The dealer told me that they estimate .5 hour labor charge of $67.50 plus tax. I found a independent guy that said they'd do it for me for $50 cash. If I had a PC/laptop (we are a Mac/Apple household), I'd probably spring for a VAG-COM to do it myself.

So -all in all I should come in at under half the cost of the dealer.

Stevetre

I put a scanner on it to reprogram the battery. And the scanner read that it wasn’t needed on the 07 and 08 ?? Thing still doesn’t start though. Not done yet….

'10Q7TDI_Prestige'

Make sure you have a VAGCOM capable scan tool; otherwise it can't communicate with the VW Auto Group coding in the car modules, etc., and it will only read the CEL /MIL codes. This car holds onto error codes internally for troubleshooting purposes, but you have to have a VAGCOM device to get at those codes and also to erase them, etc.

HOT TIP: If you replace a battery w/o having a jumper battery/power source on the under hood jumper terminals, then the car is going to throw out major error/trouble codes in most control modules when battery gets disconnected; these must be scanned/cleared.

Stevetre

Thank you. I’m going to send this scanner back anyway. Ya got a good recommendation for a all around scanner that doesn’t have a ridiculous price to it.

Pothole5000

VCDS is the absolute best, ODB eleven will get you into most things you need on this car for normal maintenance.