I recently purchased a 2012 Ford Focus for my son’s first car. It sat for a while as he did not have his license. One day the battery died so I replaced it. It is now doing it again. It has happed 4 times in 2 months. It will sit for a week and start right up then the next day totally dead. It appears that a have a intermittant parasitic battery draw that does not happen regularly. I saw some older posts in here but nothing recent. I have verified that nothing is being left on from a user perspective.
It has been at service shop for a week and has started everyday for them. They state it does not show an abnormal draw so far. I am fairly certain that on an occasional basis when turned off that some module/component is not going to sleep like it should and thus it runs the battery down overnight. I have heard someposts that could be body control module but I really dont want to start throwing random parts at this issue. Any suggestions?
I suspect that the son is playing the radio for long periods or doing something to deplete the battery if the shop see’s no problem.
He does not even have his license yet. No it is drain why nothing is occurring
No offence, but unless you have the keys on you or in your sight 100% of the time, you can’t say for sure if he is playing the radio while your not home or not… My son ran my hotrod out of gas with out me knowing and I am a very observant OCD person… lol
Not saying he is doing that but you can’t rule it out if he has access to the key in anyway… Having a License has nothing to do with playing the radio…
But if you are letting it sit for a week and then just starting it up with out letting it run long enough to charge the battery up from the start then you are just depleting the battery… But we don’t know the whole story behind your issue… How long you are running the engine once started or if you are driving it…
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+1 to all of Dave’s points.
Yup!
After the National automobile company won the Indianapolis 500 in 1912, my Grandfather bought one of their touring cars, to be driven ONLY by his Chauffeur. When the Chauffeur wasn’t looking, my father (about 16 at the time) “borrowed” his father’s National, and while he was lucky enough to have not gotten into an accident, he did incur the wrath of my Grandfather.
The bottom line is that adolescent males are very prone to “operate” a car that they believe to be “theirs”, whether they are licensed, or not. And, even if they are not behind the wheel, they may wind up playing the radio of “their” car, or otherwise deplete the battery.
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Is this focus a hatchback?
The solution is like finding any other leak, leaky water hose, tire goes flat, just have to keep looking until problem is found. Ask shop to show you how to measure the “everything off” battery drain current. then you can monitor the mA reading in your driveway. Should be less than 75 mA after all the computers have turned off, which might take anywhere from a few minutes after turning key off, to a couple of hours. If the current is well above 75 mA, and nothing visible, then you can start removing fuses to narrow down which circuit the drain is on.
Beyond that, about all you can do is check for any light turned on when it shouldn’t , like the brake lights, glove compartment light, etc. Try pushing on the locked doors, sometimes a faulty door switch will cause this.
You always have the option to ask the shop to keep the car until they figure it out. Ask if one of their staff will use it as their daily driver. Eventually the problem will return.