Battery Varta or OEM KIA

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.

My GTI's original Varta battery lasted 7 yrs with normal driving/ number of starts.

I replaced mine also with the G14 and no problem at all, so it should work or your old battery broke becasuse of a defective module jorg

Here is a picture of the left battery that the factory put in my W12 when it was new. As you can see, it is labelled both 'Varta DE' and 'VW AG'.

I have mine VARTA battery since the car was made in 2006. Works like a charm. Great Batteries.

The dealer sold me part # 000-915-105-DH for my swap yesterday. Sadly I didn't note the mfg and now that it's buttoned up we'll never know... FWIW - it looked almost identical to the Varta #1J0 915 105 AG that I pulled out.

As for the battery choice, I'd personally opt for the Varta. The main reason being the service life you have received from the original battery. I wouldn't worry too much about the Varta's lower rating as the original has seemed sufficient over approximately 6 years and most Phaeton owners are reporting excellent life from the original batteries.

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