Outer Limits 4x4 Board

OK - if I leave my GQ Patrol Diesel sit for more than say 1 week - the battery struggles to start it from cold.
Once Im driving around it starts fine.

Im thinking that something is slowly draining the battery - when the cars switched off.

what Ive looked at so far with mutlimeter:
charging volts - OK
battery volts - OK


if I turn the vehicle off, remove key, then check between battery - and the - clamp with multimeter.
What amps should be acceptable ??

BrettInUte wrote:OK - if I leave my GQ Patrol Diesel sit for more than say 1 week - the battery struggles to start it from cold.
Once Im driving around it starts fine.

Im thinking that something is slowly draining the battery - when the cars switched off.

what Ive looked at so far with mutlimeter:
charging volts - OK
battery volts - OK


if I turn the vehicle off, remove key, then check between battery - and the - clamp with multimeter.
What amps should be acceptable ??

Depending on what you have in there that requires constant power for memory (eg alarm, stereo, clock, dunno what else) I would not expect to see more than maybe 20 - 30 milliamps.

Rather than current drain, a dying battery could be the cause. Your symptoms would be fairly typical for a battery that is near the end of its useful life.

Jason

if everything was off(stereo clocks etc) then with the multimeter hooked up in series between the battery and positive terminal then the reading should be 0.0amps

around 0.01 to 0.15 i would think was normal depending on your dash clock etc.

0.5 would be like an interior light on or similar

just a rough guide, hope it helps:)

normal battery drain should not be any more than .06 of an amp , sum later mod falcons run up to .08, if its over that u have a drain, an interior light will draw close to or over 1 amp depending on the car, also dont forget ur drain is proportional to ur battery voltage.

personaly. 0.05 amps is the limit to draining.
JMO

A good alarm should only draw around 0.02 A (it will fluctuate with the flashing dash light.) Other devices with a permanent 12v supply for memory circuits etc shouldn't add much to this figure.


I'd say anything over 0.05A is worth investigating further (remove fuses one at a time to work out what it is )

Thanks guys.

Ill double check the key-off amps.
If too high - iill just remove fuses one at a time until I find the leak !!!

cheers

Im probably stating the obvious, but make sure the top of the battery is clean, or at least, around the posts are clean, and crud free.
You can get voltage across the top of the battery, even if its not that dirty.

Clean by applying some bicarb mixed with water, allow to bubble, rinse off, then hit with hot water, and clean dry with paper towel. Apply either spray grease to the termials or grease by fingers, or vasaline. Anything to cover the posts and terminals.
Keep an eye on it.
You dont have an ear melting sound system with amps that resemble a power station in the boot or anything like that .
hehe

Trains

OK - spent some time on sunday.
after figuring out I needed the multimeter inputs in the OTHER socket - I could happily measure the amps running from battery negative to the negative lead.

It was pulling 0.18 amps with the key off. - NOT good.
SO i proceeded to pull out all the fuses one at a time. did the factory ones first - then the ones I had added. watching the amps for each one.

the second last one I tried - dropped the amps from .18 to .01. Ah ha.

I chased the problem down to a single dodgey relay. it looked OK, and clicked on and off OK - but the pin that had the main power running out of it was slightly melted at the base. As soon as I swapped it with another higher amp relay - it all worked fine !!!

I think my 3 way fridge would have caused this. Ill keep an eye on it from now on.

cheers for all the advice guys....

Hey, great to hear what it was, and that you have nailed it.

Gotta love elec gremlins, there tricky buggers to find at times.

Well done on finding it.

Trains

Top stuff, and good work finding it for yourself!