3 day battery drain

[WOODY]

Hey All, I have huge parasitic losses on my car. 3 days is the max she can sit and still start! I have a fairly new yellow top battery(< 1 yr old). How do I isolate the major suspects? I have added to the car:
aem
car pc and screen
gauges

none of these items are able to be powered up with the ignition off so I do not feel they are the culprits.

Is there a single fuse I can pull that disconnects ALL power while it is not being driven in order to save the battery? I have a tender on the battery but sometimes the car sits several days in a ramp with no juice and I am sick of lugging a battery pack out there.
Any help is apreciated as always:smile:

 

[I1O101I]

do u have an alarm on your car? I would leave my accord parked for about 2 weeks and the battery would be drain because of the Viper alarm I had. I had the red top in the accord. I just installed a red top in my nsx.

Bryan

 

[ChopsJazz]

Is there a single fuse I can pull that disconnects ALL power while it is not being driven in order to save the battery?

This may be a temporary answer, but it doesn't really address the problem, only the symptom. Find the problem by individually testing for drains at the fuses. Three days of sitting should not negatively affect your battery at all. I have a '91 and sometimes I don't drive it for a month or so. I've never had a low battery problem.

 

[WOODY]

do u have an alarm on your car? I would leave my accord parked for about 2 weeks and the battery would be drain because of the Viper alarm I had. I had the red top in the accord. I just installed a red top in my nsx.

Bryan

this happens even when my stock alarm is not activated.

This may be a temporary answer, but it doesn't really address the problem, only the symptom. Find the problem by individually testing for drains at the fuses. Three days of sitting should not negatively affect your battery at all. I have a '91 and sometimes I don't drive it for a month or so. I've never had a low battery problem


How do I check for drains at the fuses

 

[Malibu Rapper]

none of these items are able to be powered up with the ignition off so I do not feel they are the culprits.

I would not bet on this. Although a device may only be able to be powered on with the ignition on, there could be parasitic drain. Unless all power to the devices are fed through an ignition only power source, I wouldn't rule them out just yet.

If the battery is good and you really want to nail down the culprit, an electrical specialist can help you in tracking down the sources of current draw when your car is off.

Is there a single fuse I can pull that disconnects ALL power while it is not being driven in order to save the battery? I have a tender on the battery but sometimes the car sits several days in a ramp with no juice and I am sick of lugging a battery pack out there.
Any help is apreciated as always:smile:

You can either disconnect the battery or buy a battery disconnect switch. Keep in mind you will lose your clock and radio settings.

 

[BioBanker]

My bet is that his battery is cooked and even the small things like the clock are bringing him down below the min voltage reqd to start.

Get a digital voltmeter and tell us what it says.

 

[BATMANs]

Does ur battery look like this:

If so, that might be the problem.

I've replaced numerous times in different cars...

 

[BenDF]

If you have a mutimeter, you can check the voltage at the battery when the car is running.

It should read 13.5 volts or so when the car is running. If it's not, then your alternator may not be charging the battery at idle, if at all. Could be as simple as a loose belt, or as bad as needing a new alternator.

If the alternator is charging, then you should have the battery checked at Auto Zone or something like that.

These are the first things I would do before anything, if it were my car.


Good luck.

 

[Doc308]

Last year, i had a similar problem with my '92 with a one year old battery in it. It turned out that my near-new battery was a bad one. If your battery has gone dead several times and has had to be jumped, it may be dying for good and won't hold a charge.

 

[Joshs]

Hey All, I have huge parasitic losses on my car. 3 days is the max she can sit and still start! I have a fairly new yellow top battery(< 1 yr old). How do I isolate the major suspects? I have added to the car:
aem
car pc and screen
gauges

none of these items are able to be powered up with the ignition off so I do not feel they are the culprits.

Is there a single fuse I can pull that disconnects ALL power while it is not being driven in order to save the battery? I have a tender on the battery but sometimes the car sits several days in a ramp with no juice and I am sick of lugging a battery pack out there.
Any help is apreciated as always:smile:

Modern PC's almost always draw power when they are off, to enable things like WOL. Furthermore, the USB ports will often continue to receive power, but this depends on your particular power supply. My Opus (carpc power supply) is designed to cut power to the USB ports when it's off, while I have heard of others that require a modification for this 'feature'.

Checking for current drain with an ammeter seems like the most direct troubleshooting method, but you could easily eliminate a potential culprit by simply disconnecting the power for the PC and waiting a few days to see if anything changes.

-Josh

 

[Griffen]

I had this same problem and replaced my battery but that only gave me a little over a week instead of 3 or 4 days before it went dead. I found my problem to be the trunk light staying on.

 

[widebody]

You can also use a multimeter between the chassis and the positive terminal on the battery. If it shows any voltage then you have a short somewhere.

EDIT: Oops... I mean the negative terminal of the battery and the chassis

 

[Daedalus]

You can also use a multimeter between the chassis and the positive terminal on the battery. If it shows any voltage then you have a short somewhere.

EDIT: Oops... I mean the negative terminal of the battery and the chassis

The negative terminal and the chassis are the same node; there's no potential difference between the 2.

 

[widebody]

The negative terminal and the chassis are the same node; there's no potential difference between the 2.

Hmm, maybe I'm thinking incorrectly. But I remember troubleshooting a similar problem on my car a couple years ago. And I know there's a way to do this to see if there is a short. Maybe it's by measuring resistance in OHM between the positive terminal and chassis?

 

[Daedalus]

I'm guessing you may have been measuring current as suggested earlier. :wink: There's always some small current drain (alarm, clock, stereo memory?) but probably shouldn't be much (<100mA?). As others have suggested, put the ammeter in series between the battery and ground to see the total current drain, then start pulling fuses. The reduction in total current drain per fuse tells you how much current, if any, that circuit is taking. A 10A meter should be sufficient for this task w/ the car off. If you blow the 10A fuse on the meter you have a really big drain!

 

[TomCat]

Not the answer...BUT I never know when I park the car, if I'll drive it again for up to a month...SO, I got a "battery tender" (NOT A TRICKLER CHARGER) for mine and no problems since.

 

[Zishan]

I had this same problem and replaced my battery but that only gave me a little over a week instead of 3 or 4 days before it went dead. I found my problem to be the trunk light staying on.

I'm a little curious how one would discover this. Reminds me of a dog chasing it's tail.... :smile: :tongue:

 

[Malibu Rapper]

I'm a little curious how one would discover this. Reminds me of a dog chasing it's tail.... :smile: :tongue:

If the trunk light stays on, that means the trunk latch sensor thinks it's open. If it's open, the indicator in the dash should light up.

 

[Joshs]

I'm a little curious how one would discover this. Reminds me of a dog chasing it's tail.... :smile: :tongue:

Malibu's suggestion is the simplest and should be sufficient for most situations - but let's say your indicator was questionable or broken. You could stick a video camera in the trunk and close it.. Then review the recording afterwards to see what happened.

-Josh