OK, I don't know if this belongs in electronics or not, I guess that depends upon your definition for electrical vs. electronics.
anyway, a few weeks ago, I drove to work and when I went to leave, my battery was completely dead. I got a jump, got it started, drove it home.
Parked it in the garage, re-started it to see if the battery had re-charged, it started just fine. I then began monitoring the battery voltage from the fuse block in the engine compartment and it was dropping quickly enough over the next 2 hours, I knew by AM, it would be dead. So I drove a different car the next day on a business trip. I later pulled the battery out of the car, charged it up and let it sit in the garage for 3 weeks. It seemed to hold a charge, small drop in voltage over time, but not much. I put it back in the car today, it started right up, but I noticed what I thought was a significant spark when I connected the negative battery cable. I drove it to a gas station, filled her up, drove home and checked the voltage, it was back up to 12.3
I've been checking it periodically and it is dropping fast enough that I can tell it is being discharged. when I disconnected the negative cable to stop the discharge, it didn't spark as bad as before, but that could be the big spark was charging up all the discharged capacitors.
Anyone have their car do this to them? Any knowledge what item on the car is most likely to fail in a manner that then becomes a drain on the battery while the car is turned off? I'm hoping for some ideas before I just start pulling fuses to see if I can find the problem area that way.
I did disconnect the 2 things I recently did to my car, to eliminate them as the culprit.
anyway, a few weeks ago, I drove to work and when I went to leave, my battery was completely dead. I got a jump, got it started, drove it home.
Parked it in the garage, re-started it to see if the battery had re-charged, it started just fine. I then began monitoring the battery voltage from the fuse block in the engine compartment and it was dropping quickly enough over the next 2 hours, I knew by AM, it would be dead. So I drove a different car the next day on a business trip. I later pulled the battery out of the car, charged it up and let it sit in the garage for 3 weeks. It seemed to hold a charge, small drop in voltage over time, but not much. I put it back in the car today, it started right up, but I noticed what I thought was a significant spark when I connected the negative battery cable. I drove it to a gas station, filled her up, drove home and checked the voltage, it was back up to 12.3
I've been checking it periodically and it is dropping fast enough that I can tell it is being discharged. when I disconnected the negative cable to stop the discharge, it didn't spark as bad as before, but that could be the big spark was charging up all the discharged capacitors.
Anyone have their car do this to them? Any knowledge what item on the car is most likely to fail in a manner that then becomes a drain on the battery while the car is turned off? I'm hoping for some ideas before I just start pulling fuses to see if I can find the problem area that way.
I did disconnect the 2 things I recently did to my car, to eliminate them as the culprit.