Battery is slowly draining

General Discussion
1

I have developed a slow loss of electricity that will drain the battery dead in a couple weeks if left alone. I’ve had 2 mechanics look at it with no solution. If you have a idea on how to back track the electrical system to find where the point of loss could be, PLEASE let me know where to get the info at
rgw5944@yahoo.com
Thanks
Ron Wade

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2

Watch this

or this

or this

But I will say a late model car with a less-than-new battery will do this even with nothing wrong. I’m currently (pun intended) charging my car right now because of this.

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Do you have any aftermarket accessories installed, such as a remote starter or a security system?

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We need a new section for battery drain, since it seems to come up more than once a month with essentially the exact same question.

  1. Check that the battery is good by letting it go disconnected for the same amount of time to see if that fixes it.

  2. Use the current measurement setting on your multimeter to measure the current draw. Disconnect the negative battery connection to insert the meter. 2 weeks with a 60AH battery = 178mA of drain. That’s rather high and easy to detect. Use the 10A meter function. Don’t turn on the headlights or the cabin fan or use the power windows to keep things under 10A. Once it settles down after closing the door, start pulling fuses until you find the one that is causing the excessive draw.

If there is no high drain (over 50mA), then it’s probably a weak battery as someone said. 60mA = 6 weeks until dead with a typical good battery.

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Good ideas above. For best help here, suggest post your car’s make/model/year/engine/transmission config. If I had that problem the first thing I’d do towards a diagnosis is a battery load test. If the battery is older & “iffy” it may still hold enough charge to start the car if driven the day or two before, but it won’t hold as much charge as a new battery, and it won’t stay charged as long. If your battery is 4+ years old, you might want to just replace it with a new one, may well solve the entire problem.

The other common reason for an unexplained battery draw is a faulty door open/closed switch. This can cause the computers to think someone is getting into the car in the middle of the night, so they all wake up and, it if occurs over and over, drain the battery in the process.

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Might be just at week battery if it take a couple weeks to get weak.