458 Do 458s Have Battery Cutoff Switches?

How many volts does the battery read?

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13.25V

SV

 

The 458 doesn't have a battery cut off switch like you are thinking (like the 355 and 360 had, which was a round black knob that you can turn and disconnect the ground). The 458 has more of a "quick" disconnect latch affair, which is on a post near the battery. But it sucks by comparison to how nicely it was setup on the 360.

On my 458, I actually bought an power cut off switch from a 355 and I was going to install it into the 458, but never got around to it. I still have it if anyone is interested in purchasing it off me. I had intended to install it on my pickup truck also, but I ended up using a battery cable that was pretty easy to take on and off.

Anyway, hope that helps a bit. Basically the cam lock latch thing for the 458 isn't really all that great and you usually just have to end up undoing the latch and nut as I remember.

Ray

 

What is the voltage level of the battery?

You might also check the fuses on top of the positive side of the battery.

If he turns the key on, is there any display at all or just totally dead?

Ray

 

It’s mine.

It’s totally dead. But my battery monitor shows adequate voltage. Haven’t torn into it yet.

Possible that after three months installed one of the battery mounts came loose. But did a nice trip in it last week and no problem and came home then had dinner on Saturday. Don’t think I took it out till Thursday when nothing was on, no security lite n no fob response.

Just thought about the battery charger. I should get some response from plugging that in...

SV

 

What's the voltage level that you are seeing? And is the voltage reading coming in through the dash gauge in the car or do you have a digital volt meter?

If it's totally dead, no start. I would guess the voltage level just dropped too low and/or the battery is super weak.

If you have a battery charger (not the tender) I would recommend fully disconnecting the battery during charging. If it's the tender, you can try hooking that up and leaving it over night to see if the battery takes a charge.

Ray

 

i have an antigravity I installed 3 months ago. It shows about 13.5V on the battery monitor I installed with it.

No start and no electronics at all.

I’m hoping that plugging in the lithium charger will power up the system so I can see if the battery connection is the only fault.

I hope it isn’t a higher level failure!

SV

 

Nothing against Antigravity, but part of the reason I stick with Braille is due to their simplicity.

Are you able to take a voltage measurement directly across the + and - terminals of the Antigravity battery itself? I personally wouldn't trust the BMS that is buried inside. I think seeing actual electrons flowing across the main posts is what matters most here.

13.5 volts is good, but that doesn't explain why the car isn't powering up. Like you say, hopefully it's not something higher up the food chain here.

Have you checked the little flip on/off battery ground stuff? Also, if you have a continuity meter, I would check all those top fuses on the square panel which connects down onto the positive terminal of the battery.

Plug the tender in, which will provide voltage and modest amps to the entire system, then see if you can at least get a dash screen to power up and/or maybe some response from the alarm system in some manner.

Ray

 

Plugging in the charger did nothing. Which is rather worrying.

However I did notice that Bluetooth app wasn’t connecting to the device. Their user UI isn’t any good so you have to dig down to notice.

Anyway, the battery monitor is not built in but I mounted it onto connector leads so I know if the connections have failed. So either the battery connection has become loose or I’ve had a catastrophic failure of the battery or somewhere higher in the chain.

I’ll tear into it tomorrow and Sunday and measure with a DVM and reconnect the battery terminals.

Thanks!

SV

 

My Antigravity battery floats at around 13.51 volts and read fully charged on my tracker. This is consistent with my hand held checker.

Have you tried using the keyfob for the battery or the button on top of it? Remember that part of the Antigravity safety, is thst the battery shuts off before getting drained. Try and activate the battery and see if it gets online.

How many LED's come on in your CTek XS lithium charger then you connect it to the battery?

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I haven’t yet tried the antigravity fob. I figure I will give it a go if the connections look solid and nothing seems awry otherwise. I’d like to be able to monitor the reaction.

Else if a connection is loose then I can retighten and retry and everything should come back.

Or something else is amiss.

No LEDs on the Ctek. And no power in the cabin.

SV

 

Kinda sounds like your Antigravity battery has unilaterally decided to disconnect itself.

Do you have another battery you can jump into the mix? If you have long enough jumper cables, you can connect another car battery across (just don't start the other car). If the Ferrari powers up, then you know it's the Antigravity.

Ray

 

Why not try the fob BEFORE taking things apart?

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Found out a bunch yesterday.

Used a DVM to measure the battery. Voltage about .5V. Not good.

Check the connections. Ground quick connector is loose. Re-lock it and it opens and closes but the close position is not tight. Play with it a bit to see if I can get a temporary stable position so I can try to used the battery’s fail safe option. Manage that and place the DVM probes to monitor the voltage. Don’t know if it is driving a low impedance short or not but time to see if the rail can come up.

Grab the fob and hit the little black button.

Power comes back up! Got over 12V. Lights come up. Let it sit for a minute. Meanwhile I monitor the battery thru Bluetooth and it’s sitting at 20% power. Hit the start button and car groans a bit but starts! Nice. Antigravity’ fail safe option seems to work!

Monitor says the car is charging. No idiot lights on. Let it charge to 50%. Turn it off and go thru rest of startup procedure and restart again. No problem.

Cranked down the windows slightly so I can go back in and fix the loose connector without causing grief to the windows later. Put it on the charger to continue to bring back the battery. When I returned last night the battery charger showed full.

Today I’ll find a way to shim the ground connection. Then monitor to see what may have caused the battery to drain originally. Wonder if the loose connection caused the power to bounce up and down and drive the car to high power mode with uncontrolled restarts.

Or something.

SV

 

The loose connector is your problem. It can cause a condition where the car sits and switch various systems on and off. Just a few days when I disconnected and connected the battery in the Lusso, you could hear all kinds of whirring and buzzing going on as I reattach the quick release to the clamp pole. If that goes on all the time, then you drain any battery fast. Luckily the Antigravity has,a way of protecting itself from getting too low. Get everything buttoned up and you should be good to go.

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Isn't there an adjustment nut on that clamp affair for the ground?

Ray

 

Also, usually the negative and positive posts aren't the same diameter. It's possible during the installation of the posts, someone accidentally flipped them around.

Usually the very top of the negative post is about 16mm, while the very top of the positive post is closer to 17.5mm - then both taper down from there. If you've never done custom battery wiring, etc. then it's easy for that aspect of the two different posts to escape you. But they are in fact different sizes. My guess is the Antigravity could be delivered with two loose posts, which you have to bolt on. In that case, if you aren't aware of the differences in sizes between the positive vs. negative posts, it would be very easy to mix them up. It's possible some place along the way something was adjusted to compensate or something. Or maybe Ferrari uses a battery with exact the same size posts, but the USA uses different sizes or something. I can tell you on my Braille G30 battery that I run in my Toyota Pickup truck, there is very definitely a size difference between the two posts.

So I would definitely take a close look and see if something is out of whack in that regard.

Ray

 

I did not installed the terminals. Preinstalled.

I’ll take a look at the quick connector to see if it has any adjustment nut. Hope so, would be the easiest fix...

SV

Don’t have a caliper to measure the terminal width and trying to peer into the footwell to get a measurement with my eyes would be tedious.

 

In the foot well, yeah it might be hard to tell. Usually if the terminals are swapped around backwards, then you'll have real issues with either something being too tight or something being too loose. However, normally it's the positive terminal that ends up being loose and then the negative won't go far enough down. So you seem to have the opposite problem.

Here are a couple of pictures from when I was doing battery stuff on my 458. If you look at the second photo, I have drawn an arrow showing the quick-release clamp setup. There's a nut on the back side. You should be able to tighten that nut down and this will affect the diameter of the quick-release band clamp stuff. Just adjust it so the cam-lock mechanism secures the band to the negative post when it's clamped down. It sounds to me like someone might have gotten it out of adjustment and/or there is some slight difference between battery posts or something.

Ray

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When I did the install in the Lusso a few days ago, the batteries had the same pole diameter. I also used the pole caps from the new battery on the OE after removing it. Same snug fit.

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Finally took the whole battery assembly apart to pull the battery out.

Looked at the ground connector and it has a compression pin and spring but doesn’t look adjustable. A fixed design.

Placed it back on top of the terminal nice and flat and locked it. Now it was tight. Hmmm.

All I can figure is I must of put it only slightly askew and locked it in a off-position where it became loose.

Put it all back and restarted the car per the book and all seems well. After 30 min of driving battery charge was almost 100%.

Will monitor closely for a while.

Thank you all for responses!

SV