find small battery drain

Karl Townsend · 2007-03-05T10:08:09+00:00

I left my truck sit in the barn all winter. I went to start it four days ago and found out that the battery had froze and busted. (Batteries only freeze if discharged.)So, I put a new battery in. Last night, I found out the truck needed a charger to start.There must be something slowly draining power out of the battery. How do I go about finding the problem?BTW, I compared notes with my neighbor who had also just came back from a winter down south. His septic tank and drain field froze up - guess my little problem is not so bad.

Mar 05, 2007 47 Replies

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Gunner 19 years ago

commits suicide"

Yes..but I was a bit nonplussed by having a vehicle that has a unknown current draw and someone suggesting check the ground connection. If it were bad..it would not conduct..and if it were good..what current draw is it performing? Its simply a conduit.

Which reminds me..I had a similar problem with my old Chevy van..and the draw turned out to be the glove box lightbulb. The switch had failed and the bulb remained on, even with the glovebox closed. Took about a week for the battery to run down.

Gunner

"Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for Western civilization as it commits suicide"

- James Burnham

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Ecnerwal 19 years ago

You may want to take the battery into an auto parts store for testing. The car battery pulled this type of trick on me 2 or 3 times before it just crapped right out. Won't start, poke, prod, don't find problem, starts up...if a cell has high resistance, the lights light fine, but the starter draws more current than the battery can supply. The battery charger sees the thing as fully charged, since the high resistance drives the voltage up when charging.

Then again, on the truck, the starter did the same thing (Won't start, poke, prod, don't find problem, starts up...) Battery tested fine. Starter can also be tested, but is more of a pain to pull out and test. If the battery is fine with a load test (not just "the charger thinks it's fine), start looking elsewhere (pull the starter, etc).

The backhoe had a bad crimped on connector on a battery cable that looked OK, but had high resistance.

Fooli$h to replace part$ without testing. Cables are dead-easy to test (put an ohmmeter on them), but are not the most likely culprits; battery, starter, starter solenoid, dirty connections (no replacement needed, just clean and grease.)

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Gerald Miller 19 years ago

The problem with senior son's '68 Firebird was a well rusted horn relay. Gerry :-)} London, Canada

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Don Young 19 years ago

Switches for glove box lights, underhood lights, trunk lights, and stop lights are all common causes of hard to find battery drain.

Don Young

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DoN. Nichols 19 years ago

[ ... ]

Except with cars from the UK - at least my MGA was positive ground. It also used two 6V batteries in series -- one on either side of the driveshaft behind the seats (no need to say *front* seats, as there were no back seats. :-)

This made it a bit more difficult to install some things made for the USA market. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

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Nick Hull 19 years ago

Try shaking the tree. The ripe ones will fall ;) Committees of Correspondence Web page:- tinyurl.com/y7th2c

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dan 19 years ago

What's that Lassie? You say that "Karl Townsend" fell down the old rec.crafts.metalworking mine and will die if we don't mount a rescue by Mon, 05 Mar 2007 23:16:45 GMT:

MSC has them.

Dan

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