Do our cars use AGM or reg battery? Standard 12 volt?

 

It's rare to see a MINI with a AGM battery, the vast majority of them have a flooded battery. There are typically 2 different sizes of them, if you going to put a larger battery (CCA) than what are from the factory then your going to want it registered to the car so it charges at the correct amount or it won't last.

 

AGM battery here. I put one in my Jeep and had such good luck, I didn't hesitate when it came time for a battery in the MINI.

I went with the Sears Die-Hard AGM. My MINI did not require registering the battery so it was a simple swap. No regrets. No problems.

 

I am using Odyssey PC1200MJT.

 

You only need to register the battery if your car has IBS (Intelligent Battery Sensor).

You can tell if your car has IBS by looking at the negative battery cable, if it has a box on it like in the picture, it has IBS.

 

Thank you everyone for the helpful posts. Mine just has a regular negative battery cable, no Box on it at all just a plane black cable. I put a battery tender on while swamping out old battery and have swapped in a 760CCA AGM battery. The car so far seems to not know the difference (why would it?) So far so good, new battery seems to help a lot when starting when really cold at night, old one looked like it had been there for many years.

 

I use Odyssey's in my boat and wave runners. Just changed out one that's over ten-years old just because.

 

Whats really funny is I use the identical battery for my Grand Cherokee. So one vehicle with a 1.6L and another with a 6.4L and same size make and model of battery.

 

Depending on the day of the week your MINI was made I've seen either one come in different MINIs. So my general rule is to put the same kind of battery back in. But if we do want to change you need to make sure the shop you have can reprogram the DME correctly as the programming is different for AGM and not. It's very important to have the batter registered to the car as it will get overcharged if it isn't and burn out sooner.

 

But, If you don't have IBS, it doesn't matter what battery you put in it. There'd be nothing to program, so you couldn't register the battery.

 

Actually even without the IBS sensor you still program the DME for a new battery.

 

agm's like a slightly lower float charge (13.5 vs 13.8) so if you just drop an agm in without registering you are overcharging it.

Of course folks have been doing that for years ln vehicles that arent smart enough to be adaptable so I guess it cant be so awful.

If you want to check that, check the battery voltage after running some considerable time.

 

How do You know this? Everything I've read says that if there is no IBS module on the negative battery terminal then there is no need to register the battery.

 

I've run an AGM Optima in my 2010 Camden MCS for two years with no problems. It does not have IBS. No charging "adjustments" were ever done.

 

So I decided to do some testing after getting back home from the auto show in philly (130 miles from me), right after home I tested the battery and it was 12.55 volts with car off, after restarting it ran 14.25 volts with car running. Seems to work fine after driving 260 miles or so.