Battery drain

[SteveSAS]

Hi guys,

I have a recent decent Exide battery that has stood up for the last few months with me using the car once a week at weekends.
This time around the car has been sat for 2 weeks, all locked with alarm.

Went to start today & it's completely dead. Had to open doors manually, checked battery with multimeter & it read just 2 volts.

I have amp in boot that is constantly 12v wired & also some recent prosport gauges that also has a constant 12v wire.

I checked the battery draw previously with the old battery that was on car & it showed 0.6 amp drain. Oh I previously checked boot light was going out & it was.

So it seems if I was using regular I may not even notice a problem. Anyone else experience issues if left a couple weeks with alarm activated?

Oh, just to clear up, all 3 gauges were working correctly with the volt gauge reading just over 14 volts when running.

Cheers

Steve

[jhfozzy]

A 0.6A (600mA) drain is far too much.

You should be getting around 0.05A (50mA) on a standard car and still under 0.1A (100mA) with a few extra alarms etc.

With the meter on and the bonnet switch depressed, pull the fuses one by one to find out which circuit the drain is on.

If you need to check the fuses inside the car, open the driver's door and then manually push the catch over in the door. Now lock the car again and you can check the inside fuses.

If none of the fuses reduce the drain, disconnect the large terminals one by one as I've seen the alternator cause a drain before.

Work methodically and you should be able to trace the drain.

[SteveSAS]

Originally Posted by jhfozzy

A 0.6A (600mA) drain is far too much.

You should be getting around 0.05A (50mA) on a standard car and still under 0.1A (100mA) with a few extra alarms etc.

With the meter on and the bonnet switch depressed, pull the fuses one by one to find out which circuit the drain is on.

If you need to check the fuses inside the car, open the driver's door and then manually push the catch over in the door. Now lock the car again and you can check the inside fuses.

If none of the fuses reduce the drain, disconnect the large terminals one by one as I've seen the alternator cause a drain before.

Work methodically and you should be able to trace the drain.

Cheers for your feedback, battery currently being charged to hopefully full capacity, then will connect and see.

I have already disconnected & removed the amp & sub from boot. They were already in car when I bought it, don't use radio much & boy does the sub weigh a ton.

Still seems strange that for months the battery has stood up to this drain if used once every week & then all of a sudden one extra week left is enough to kill it stone dead. While using once a week there was no indication of a problem ie sluggish start ups.

Think what I will do once got battery back on is check every couple days for any volt drop on battery first of all.

Thanks again

[Dereksti]

I had similar problem with previous car fitted with a tracker iff car wasn’t used regular battery would drain in couple of weeks,got tracker removed end of problem.

[McGoo60]

Mine had similar, was the gauges, changed from permanent 12v to ignition 12v and its been fine ever since.