** UPDATE **

So after alot of thought into the matter and some more reading I decided that I would go back to basics and ensure that my battery was in good condition and upto the task.

As I don't use the X5 all that often it does get left for days at time unused. It has been flattened more times than I care to remember especially with this current issue lurking.

I decided to take some voltage readings over a time period after giving it a full charge. This is what I found. Readings were taken at 7:30am every morning before I left for work in my other car.

Day 1 - Straight after full charge - 12.8v
Day 2 - 12.42v
Day 3 - 12.31v
Day 4 - 12.23v

So basically after a 4 day period it had lost around 50% of it's charge. This I wasnt't overly impressed with and decided it was enough to warrant getting it swapped out.

When I initially bought the car it went back into a garage to have some work done under warranty. One of these being a new battery. I checked the invoice for the work which was only 18 months ago and could see that they had fitted a Bosch S3 017 battery. I wasn’t overly impressed by this as I would have preferred it to have slightly more capacity for piece of mind. To cut a long story short I had been less than impressed with the work they had carried out previously so our relationship had gone a little sour. However I spoke to the garage and they sent me the receipt for the battery from their supplier and told me I could sort it out myself which I much preferred. Fortunately they got the battery from the same supplier I get my parts from and I have a pretty good relationship with the people in there so one of the guys agreed to swap the battery out and replace it with a much better Exide 019 AGM 95Ah/850CCA battery for an extra £40 instead which should help hold charge longer since it’s not used all that often – also it should rule out any possible battery issues that might be causing my gremlins so give me a good base to work from if this doesn’t sort it.
At the same time I’m fitting a Ctek charging point/indicator at the rear of the car so I can keep it regularly topped up without having to pop the bonnet. I’ve also got another trick up my sleeve which I’ll be ordering shortly.

Unfortunately changing the battery in my X5 involves messing around removing the large LPG tank as it is sat on top of the battery so I wanted to make sure that it was done once and done right. I removed the battery last night and took it to get swapped this morning. I will re-install it tonight all being well and see how that affects my issue.

Shoddy work by the garage


LPG tank in the way


New charging point in place


New battery ready to go in