Jaanus

do not disconnect battery, give it full charge. if possible, buy a maintenance charger and leave it connected. for charging use only "smart" chargers that will not give more than 15V out. like CTEK (google for those). charging current should not be above 1/10 of the Ah-s of your battery. 8A if the battery is 80Ah. when back from holiday, let the dealer (if under warranty) do the battery load test. that will give you an idea if you need a new battery. if car is not under warranty, have a load test done in a shop that sells batteries. You will definitely need Silver-Calcium battery (usual batteries will be cooked by the Ford Smart-Charge system quite quickly). BTW - disconnecting the battery will not damage the electronics if no sparks BUT you will loose all the settings. most probably the should NOT be in the ignition lock (worth checking from dealer). most probably your battery is just in "winter condition". that means, it is half-empty.

I had it checked, they told me it is normal alternator whine :)

Half an hour charging in cold will give perhaps 4 Ah. Good enough to start the car, the surface charge is almost 13 V perhaps. But if the battery was empty then it stays empty even with 150 miles driving. The main issue is: was it cold? In temperatures the cold air will enter the engine bay and will cool the battery. The "smart-charge" system checks the engine temperature and will lower the system voltage when engine warm. However, it is not good enough to charge the cold battery. It will take a lot of time to warm up the battery until it will start accepting charge fast enough. The good old lead-acid battery depends SO much of the temperature. Been there, done that... But it is worth checking the standby current (the amount the car draws from battery when standby). By the way: was the car locked? When locked, the computers are in sleep mode. When not locked, the computers draw more energy. And there is always the possibility that the battery is dead.

Can you describe the noise? I am going mad about the whine I get from the belt area. And yes, it could come from the pump area. The whine is similar to "too tight" belt whine: it is high pitch whine that will follow the rotations of the engine. The whine will be more powerful when accelerating slowly and is best heard when rpm is 1000-2500. And yes, I heard it first time in December/January (16000 km / 1000 miles). But of course there are other possibilities like tensioner etc.

I have the same problem. 2 weeks and the battery is flat. There are the reasons, I will explain shortly. *) The battery is 52 Ah (quite small). That means that this car need daily driving. *) The daily consumption of the car is 1 Ah. Thought it seems small, you have to take into consideration that the alternator will never charge battery to 100%. Even more, during cold weather there is a lot of electrical load on the battery and also battery is not able to take charge quickly. *) The problem appears mostly when you drive short trips in cold weather using a lot of electrical gadgets (windshield heater, seat heaters, fan, lights etc). The battery usually has a charge of perhaps 40..50% of full battery. That means that during 2 weaks it will be as good as dead (in cold weather the CCA and Ah available will drop drastically). *) That means that you should use battery maintainer/float charger for longer stay. I bought Telwin T-Charge 12, intelligent charger. Perhaps in UK you are able to purchase CTEK products - these are the same, they are good. The good thing is that they are fully automatic, that means they will not destroy you battery if left on. *) On MKIII I use the auxiliary power port in the cargo area (sorry for my English). That is the power socket similar to cigarette adapter, BUT that socket stays on even when the car is locked. You can use small current on that (the fuse is 15A). But the modern intelligent chargers give perhaps most 4..8 A, so it should be fine. I use the car in Estonia and this winter here was -30 C degrees couple of days, -20 C is usual. With the charger once a week everything works smoothly. The 52Ah is standard battery for 2.0 petrol engine also in Scandinavia/Baltics. Otherwise, it is good to have your battery load tested just in case.