Battery Varta or OEM BMW

The OEM battery is probably the best bang for the buck. I replaced mine with another OEM one after 7 years as a preventive measure. It was still performing fine.

Agree with everybody on here, change your battery - I had similar problems and others not mentioned, changed the battery and almost all problems disappeared.

I bought my 2008 3.6 4motion wagon a little over 3 years ago. It came with the original OEM battery, part number 4F0 915 105 E, and I was both impressed that it lasted that long and curious as to how much longer it would last.

I am still on my original battery in my 2007 335i w/ 87k miles.

I only use Varta batteries and i hade my 4 years and i dont even use it in winters(6Months) and when i charge it it keeps me up the rest of the summer around 6 months there too...=)

Hi Mike, Varta G14 is the retail equivalent, assuming you don't order the OEM one from VW Parts.

Thank you for this excellent write up. Made switching out the 11 year old Varta a breeze. Locally cold temps caused negative strap reconnect challege due to stiffness. That and the mass of the big AGM we're the main challenges.

My oem battery lasted from '08 to '13. The last few weeks the car would hesistate to start. The starter would click click, dashboard lights would flicker, and the ECU and CANBUS would reset. I'd lose the auto windows and see my trip odo reset, but the battery read 12.5V and alternator read just fine too. I waited until the day I had to jump-start the car then drove to VW and bought a new OEM battery; I believe it's a Varta. After I installed new battery the starting issues went away, but I got stuck where the car would go "clickiddy clickiddy clickiddy click" and dash lights flickered like mad; new battery too! I took my multi-tool and started beating on the connections, leads, and grounds. I found the ground wire to be a bit corroded. After cleaning the terminals with 120 grit and a whopping dose of dielectric, car starts like brand new. The starter is pretty tough.

Varta makes damn good batteries. One in my Rabbit lasted almost 5 years.

Service guy just stopped over and confirmed the battery was bad. Replacement installation in progress.