Im having 1 heckuva time finding a short. There is a small drain that will kill the battery overnight in my 72 Grabber. I have swapped alternator, starter/solenoid, and it has an Interstate 75 550 CCA new battery. When i hook up a standard volt tester light inline it doesnt show any current pull but there is definitely something draining the battery and not obvious like lights on, interiro light (ive removed the trunk light). Would be curious if anyone has any insight?
why the heck do guys insist on changing the alternator if it has an external regulator and the malfunction usually exist in the regulator, thats what i call unneccesary spending the alt. will not drain the battery the regulator will. Test lights are for the birds throw it in the trashcan you can not tell amp draw with test light only with meter digital or analog so buy one and you will find your problem.
Pk or starters i changed the alternator because a test unit showed clearly the alternator was not charging the battery so it of course was the natural thing to do. I have both a digital multimeter and a 12v simple light meter as well. Do you have anything uself or just ranting? I could use some advice not heckling. The digital meter doesnt show anything that is pointing out the drain however a drain exists. I charge the battery i use the meter to check it and it;s as expected. I open the door, turn on the lights and radio etc and see the voltage drop accordingly but with everything else off I dont see any drop in V's from the meter.
A small drain will not kill a good battery overnite. Small drain to me is radio or something equal. I have been in the same situation before, when perplexed by something like this I just pull all the fuses. If it starts next day and battery is good, then next nite pull one fuse, record what you do on a piece of paper. If it then starts next day, pull a different fuse. End result, find the circuit that is killing the battery. I know this is not an overnite solution,, but sometimes stuff like this takes time. Dan ps it takes amps to kill a battery like you have overnite, I would suspect something beyond 3 amps like a factory radio will pull. If you have an aftermarket head unit, suspect it first. pss If you remove the negative battery terminal and then put it back on, if you have a large amp draw, it should spark well enough for you to see it in daylite.
dont mean to rant sorry I just check for ampdraws with meter I turn everything off and remove the ground terminal and place on lead of my meter on the terminal and the other on the negative battery post and start pulling fuses until you find draw. didnt mean to bust ur balls sorry I believe you probably already know that method. The alternator with external regulator will charge ac, the regulator converts to dc so if you checked at the alt post and got nothing with meter set to dc, you will get nothing bcus its charging at ac. its always good to check for ac at alt post and jump the charge wire at the regulator and check to c if it puts out full dc voltage. hope that helps
Rolandag i understand ya man. I wasnt upset im just frustrated as it's past my experience of tshooting and it's frustrating to all hell What i think would be logical to find it isnt working out so good Dan, I was figuring the same thing. I should see a significant drain. here is a couple pieces of info. When i got the car 6 months ago it was work in progress it didnt have any radio in it and when I got it the previous owner told me there was a drain somewhere so I knew Id have to deal with it but I had to fix up several other things first like the suspension and alternator. I was basically just disconnecting the battery every night. Now it's ready to be a daily driver IMO and before I installed a radio I wanted to try and trace the issue so Ive been trying to scrape thru piece by piece. This issue was present long before I installed the stereo which was finally this weekend and Im pretty confident that it isnt caused from the headlights, taillights, trunk light, interior domelight, alternator, solenoid, battery. On principal i wont install a cutoff switch as this has become like my white whale FYI, there is no spark at all with neg term connector. Here is what I see with the meter: 1) with battery connected and leads on pos/neg I get 13.07 set to DCV20 2) i remove the -/ground cable from batter and go from negative battery post to the ground cable that i unplugged and I get 12.00 Now rolandag you have a good suggestion I can try but im not quite sure I 'fully understand how to check the regulator part..
:Handshake we just had that same prob. on here the other day. try the "search" option at the top and you should find a lot of usefull info. on your problem. ...put in "battery drain" and see what you get. if you don't get the answer you need post back here and we will dig a little more... ... ...
i actually dug thru the threads earlier pre posting. i looked at things like the door buzzer and some very good info on them. If i take the pos cable off the battery and then go positive lead on my meter to the cable and the negative to the battery pos post I should see 0 v's and I do but something is draining. Where are most of the fuses located. Ive located only 2 so far and Im continuing to dig.
Weird. I ran a second test where I disconnected the negative battery cable and hook one lead of the amp meter to the negative battery terminal and the other to the cable. This with everything shut off and key out of ignition. The amp meter reads the same as it did going from pos post and neg post of the batter 12.8.. This should be very low like 0 - 0.5 should it not?
hey all you have to do disconnect the negative cable from battery. take one lead from the meter and put it on the ground terminal and the other lead to the battery terminal. make sure you have the meter set to amperage and check the amp draw on it with everything off. Make sure you have the meter dial set to the right option and the leads set up right on the meter if your meter has that option. With some help from somebody to look at the meter you can start pulling fuses until the reading on the meter drops when it gets as close to zero as possible then you have found your culprit.
hey this site will help you set the meter just incase there might be an error in the connections or a misunderstanding http://mechatronics.mech.northwestern.edu/design_ref/tools/multimeter.html
hey by the way I kind figured you had the meter leads cross bcus if you reading those numbers with the key off and you have that much dcv that means you have something on im sure your amps will be up there also thats whats killing you battery oh by the way just disconnect all the radio power (main power leads going to the radio) you put in so we know thats not going to show up when you start pulling fuses.
did you put in any amps for the radio if so unplug power to those as well this will just eliminate circuits when you start pulling fuses and make it easier on you.
