So my battery has been dieing in a few hours/overnight. Even after a 2amp trickle charge overnight. I did a current draw test by taking the negative battery terminal off and putting my meter between the cable and the terminal. I got a 91-93mA draw. Now that seems high to me but not high enough to kill a battery over night. I pulled every single fuse in both the interior and the underhood fuse box and the current draw never dropped, until I pulled the main battery fuse.
Oh, the battery is two months old, and the oreilly’s guy told me it was good. But there’s a part of me that thinks the battery is shorted out internally somewhere.
Could anyone else test their base current draw for me and let me know what you get?
An electrical guru in these forums told me to place it on DCA from the meter. And placing the probes exactly where you placed them. My base current draw is 0.04amps. In the past I have checked several tegs and they all got the same reading. I’ve heard its normal to have that draw. You have constant clock or ECU battery on or something.
Also, not sure but, if you remove the batt fuse, isn’t that the same as disconnecting the battery cable therefore you will not get any readings? And thats why your meter dropped?
Yes, removing the battery fuse is like disconnecting it. I removed that fuse dead last though. So .04 amps would be 40mA, which means I’m a little over double that. Would having a obd1 p73 ecu draw more current than say an obd0/obd1 pr4? Hmmm, Now that I think the only thing I didn’t disconnect was the HID kit. I’ll try that tomorrow.
Pull the battery out of the car and give it a good trickle charge and then check your voltage output of it/ have it tested at an auto parts store. If it comes back as anything other than good then it’s probably a bad cell in the battery. If it comes back good then you know you have an electrical draw problem. The ECU shouldn’t be the problem as my B16 Teg will sit for weeks and start right up.
Dustin, I took it to oreilly’s and they tested it and said it’s ok. The battery has been sitting for about a day and a half with the negative terminal off. So if I pop it on and it starts then I know there’s an issue. The HID’s are hooked up with an auxillary relay harness so it could be possible if it’s drawing through that. I doubt it, but it’s possible. I’m free all day, so i might run to car quest and see what they say.
You will have a minor draw through the relay even if the vehicle is off. I don’t know if it would be .5 amps though. I’d hook up the VOM and start pulling fuses and see which one gives you the biggest amp drop and trace it back from there. I wonder if maybe the HID box is trying to stay charged all the time instead of just charging when you turn on the light switch.
OP- Can you do me a favor? Remove the plugs on the “Automatic seatbelt control Module” located below the passenger kick panel. Its a dull silver box with two plugs plugged into it. After thats unplugged get the reading on the multimeter. Any difference? Just wondering cause that thing on my car was giving me excessive draw. After I disconnected the plugs, the draw went away. I replaced this thing with two known good ones and still had the excessive draw. I’m sure the wiring thats associtated with the module is causing a short. To lazy to tear panels and seats apart to look for this short. So I just left this thing unplugged.
So I checked it out again this afternoon. First thing I did was check the battery voltage, it was sitting ~12.7volts. which is actually a little high. Hmm, so i then check the current draw and it’s now dropped to 25mA, which, as you know is totally normal. I then pop the terminal on, start the car and move it into the sun. I then check the current draw again and it’s back up to 93mA. So I then decide to pull every single fuse and disconnect the HID’s constant power, again nothing happened, no current drops or anything. After that I pulled the battery fuse and checked for continuity to ground in a few places. The 12v+ wires weren’t grounding anywhere that I could tell. So I put the battery fuse back in and check current again, it’s still sitting at 93mA. Now within maybe 5 minutes of putting the fuse back in and approx 30-45min after starting the car to move it and with all of the fuses pulled, the current draw dropped down to 25mA again. It did it right before my eyes and I wasn’t touching anything. So, there must be some system in the vehicle that draws a bit more current after the vehicle has been running and then minimizes the current draw after a set amount of time. However, I think the voltage regulator might be bad in the alternator. At idle the voltage @ the battery and the alternator was ~17volts :uhoh: I know that overcharging a battery can cause issues.
Akira, I’ll have to check that cause I am having some seat belt issues. Light on, beeping, all sorts of crap. I’ll look into that later this evening/tomorrow.
17V is CRAZY high. If you’re reading that straight at the alternator, something is definitely up. As you said, the voltage regulator would be the first thing to check.
Yeah, as soon as I saw 17volts I shut the car off. If it’s the voltage regulator, I might as well just replace the alternator. Those bastards are more expensive than a reman. alternator.
[QUOTE=knightsintegra;2210497]aaaaaand now the alternator is charging normally, so that regulator must be on its way out.
Akira, I unplugged that belt control and that took care of the extra current draw. Fantastic, guess I’ll have “manual” belts for awhile.[/QUOTE]
So you might have the same “wear and tear” that I have. I did a thread years ago about our auto belt seat module. It was killing my three new batteries in two days of the car sitting. The module was replaced by three known good ones and still gave accessive draw. It came down to somewhere in the wiring associated with this module. I never did find the short. I just left the thing unplugged which gave no accessive draw. Car can sit for weeks and still start but when this thing was plugged in, the battery would be at 7 volts in two days of sitting. I still am curious of where the short is though.
Somehow there is a wire that is in motion by wear and tear and give that mmm lets say 17 years of rubbing the protective sleeving to expose the copper on the wire. Causing a short.
Since you seem very motivated to work on your car and I’m not (lazy), maybe you can look for this shorted out wire and you can tell a fellow G2 member where you found it. Then I’ll just go straight to that particular spot.
Hint: The seats do slide up and down and there is a wire plugged on the moving seat. maybe there is wear on that? who knows . good luck man.
The weather is beginning to turn sour here and my days off have come to an end until next week. So I’ll have to tear into it once everything aligns. If i figure something out, I’ll let ya know.
So even with the current draw lowered down to 25mA’s it still kills my battery overnight. So I’m thinking either overcharging or the constant deep cycling has killed this battery. Well it should be under warranty of some sort, it’s only 2months old.
I just did some research and it seems that a bad voltage regulator can cause excessive current draw. It makes sense and wouldn’t necessarily show on a current draw test. Guess I’ll be pulling the alternator and either replacing it or the voltage regulator. Fun
[QUOTE=knightsintegra;2210626]The weather is beginning to turn sour here and my days off have come to an end until next week. So I’ll have to tear into it once everything aligns. If i figure something out, I’ll let ya know.
So even with the current draw lowered down to 25mA’s it still kills my battery overnight. So I’m thinking either overcharging or the constant deep cycling has killed this battery. Well it should be under warranty of some sort, it’s only 2months old.
I just did some research and it seems that a bad voltage regulator can cause excessive current draw. It makes sense and wouldn’t necessarily show on a current draw test. Guess I’ll be pulling the alternator and either replacing it or the voltage regulator. Fun[/QUOTE]
At first I thought is was my Alt/voltage regulator. Obvisouly is wasn’t. The module has been unplugged for 6 years with the same alternator and I don’t have any issues. I’m going to plug it back in just for kicks and see if I still have a draw.
Is your module still unplugged? And still killling the batt overnight? Yes it also can be you alt as well. Curious. let us know.
Yeah the module is unplugged and it is still killing the battery. The alternator is gonna have to come out soon. Now I just gotta figure out when I wanna tackle that. It’s not hard, I just hate pulling all that shit just to get the alt. out.
So today I finally ruled out the battery as the culprit. I charged it a few days ago and have let it sit on the bench at work since then. I checked the voltage today and it’s still holds a charge. God I don’t want to do the alternator!
Update: Today I replaced the alternator with a tested good one. The alternator is now charging the battery at a proper 14.7~.8volts. So i’m leaving the battery connected overnight/throughout the day to see if the current draw is taken care of. We’ll see. Overall the car runs a lot better too. I’m thinking the overcharging of the battery was making it run real goofy and I’m thinking it killed my ignition coil, which i’ve already replaced. We’ll see in a few hours/tomorrow.
This morning and throughout the day today, the car fired right up every time I turned the key. Seems my current draw problem has been solved. Good to know that a bad voltage regulator can kill a battery in a few hours. Thanks for all your help and suggestions. Now to figure out why my seat belt light stays on and to get my cooling fan working properly.