The battery runs down after a few days of not driving the car. The battery is fairly new. I make certain the lights are off and the cars are shut tight. It appears there may be a short in the system which is draining the electricity. How can I test the system to locate the leak?
Grab your multimeter and head to Youtube and look up how to do a parasitic drain test on your vehicle. Wouldn’t hurt to have the battery tested too to make sure that it hasn’t been damaged by being run down so many times
1 Like
Did you figure out the reason why the battery drains quickly ?
I have the same issue with my RX300 2001 model. The mechanic checking it says when he takes out two particular fuses then charge drain decreases a lot. One is the fuse for computer and the other I don’t remember quite well.
If the computer is causing a battery drain when the car is off, pretty good chance something is triggering the computer to think you are about ready to use it again. Faulty door or ignition switch are two common reasons. One poster here had a similar problem, discovered that jigging the car (like the wind is blowing it) causes a current surge on the battery, traced to a faulty ignition switch.
The computer normally goes into “sleep” mode when you turn the key to off. But if it thinks you are about to start the car again (b/c it thinks the door is being opened, key is being inserted into the ignition, etc) it will discontinue “sleep mode” and go to “normal mode”, which causes much high electrical power drain on the battery.
Other common reasons for battery drains are lights staying on, like brake lights, glove compartment lights, engine, trunk lights etc. So that’s something to check. It’s pretty common for brake lights to come on in the middle of the night b/c of a faulty brake light switch. I’ve had that occur on my Corolla before. Hopefully the OP is still listening and may have further ideas for poster Arun.
Thank you for the interesting tips. You are spot on about the faulty door. The front passenger side door lock is not talking to the remote open/close. So we just manually operate it. I will ask the mechanic to see if there is relay or something that operates the door lock and replace it.
I will pass on the tips to my mechanic first thing in the morning.
Thanks again
1 Like