Normal 'everything off' draw on the battery?

[Ashyukun]

As I've got an issue with my battery constantly running down when I let the car sit for a week or so (which happens a lot with three cars...), while I've got everything else apart I'm trying to track down exactly why.

With the key out and the door switches disconnected so the dome/courtesy/door lights aren't on and my multimeter between the negative of the battery and the ground connection, I'm showing a bit under 50mA of load. Pulling the harness for the stereo and the power lead for the Wings-a-Loft controller, the load drops down to around 15mA.

Is this about normal? I was expecting to see higher, as 50mA doesn't seem like that much to be draining the battery down...

[Ozzie]

I had a huge draw that would knock my battery out in a week. When I measured it the standing draw was 200ma. It turned out to be my radio standby power was sucking it all up. Once that was disconnected I went to 20ma. Now I can start the car after 2 weeks w/o a problem. If you've got 50ma it isn't bad, is there an alarm? ...or I've heard the older door lock modules also consume a bit.

Hey if you're there, can you do me a favor?
Please measure the draw on the battery, with your parking lights (and door open).

[Bitsyncmaster]

Your battery should have an amp/hour rating. Say it it 50 amp/hr. That means it can provide 50 amps for one hour. Or 1 amp for 50 hours. etc.

So your 50 ma. (0.05 amps) would completely drain the battery in 1000 hours or 42 days.

Now your amp/hour rating is for the battery when it was new. Age and a few deep discharge cycles reduce the amp/hour rating.

You really don't want to even drain half the battery power very often. You will be replacing batteries to soon. The stock and lockzilla door lock units draw about 12 ma. Your clock drains about 5 ma. The fanzilla drains about 3 ma. Your radio drain you would have to measure.

[tiger38117]

Unplug your door lock module and see if the problem goes away. It probably will.

[content22207]

50 milliamps should not kill a battery in just one week -- buy a new battery.



Bill Robertson
#5939

[Ozzie]

Aw Bill, you edited what you had written. It was 100% dead on, in terms of what batteries are today, in that they truly are 3-5 year batteries.

I came back to agree on your note, because that has exactly been my experience with several cars in the last few years. Perhaps because of our year round warm weather down here, but 4 years seems to be the life of a decent battery.

Wonder what "cost cutting" process short changed their previous longer lifespan?

[sean]

Aw Bill, you edited what you had written.

No, I edited what bill wrote. I'm quite tired of his pissing and mowning about the moderators here. Tongue and cheek or not, I'm done with his "humor".

His previous post was removed because it offered no advice, just pissing and moaning about current batteries and his days working on trains.

[content22207]

Wonder what "cost cutting" process short changed their previous longer lifespan?

1) Recycled lead (according to the EPA, nearly 96% of car batteries today are made from recycled lead)
2) The electrolyte appears to have been reformulated to be more environmentally friendly (battery fluid isn't as corrosive as it used to be -- I spilled some on my jeans with no resulting holes).

Bill Robertson
#5939

[Ashyukun]

Hey if you're there, can you do me a favor?
Please measure the draw on the battery, with your parking lights (and door open).
By 'parking lights', do you mean the driving lights- i.e. first click of the headlight switch?

It will be a while before I could measure that actually, as both fascias are off and the harnesses in them disconnected as I try and hunt down why I'm getting slight continuity between the flasher circuit and ground that's causing my high-beams to light ever so slightly when the turn signals are on...

Also, I have a number of LEDs (all the door lamps, side markers) so my numbers may be a bit different than yours would be...

[Ashyukun]

It doesn't completely kill it- but it does drain it a noticeable it. It's a Red Top though, and I've since heard they're not as ideal in our applications as the Yellow Tops are, which may be what I replace it with.

It also doesn't help that I'm pretty convinced that the alt belt has been slipping and not putting out as much power as it should. Hopefully the slight mod to the bracket should have eliminated that issue, but it'll be a few weeks before I have it running again to see...

[Ozzie]

By 'parking lights', do you mean the driving lights- i.e. first click of the headlight switch?

It will be a while before I could measure that actually, as both fascias are off and the harnesses in them disconnected as I try and hunt down why I'm getting slight continuity between the flasher circuit and ground that's causing my high-beams to light ever so slightly when the turn signals are on...

Also, I have a number of LEDs (all the door lamps, side markers) so my numbers may be a bit different than yours would be...

Yeah, first click of headlight switch.
Thanks anyway, yeah trying to quantify OEM/incandescent load

[Bitsyncmaster]

Yeah, first click of headlight switch.
Thanks anyway, yeah trying to quantify OEM/incandescent load

Here are my calculations:

Front 1157 bulbs on low beam = 0.59 amps each.
Side markers = 0.4 amps each.
Rear markers = 0.4 amps each OEM, Grady's use 10 watt or 0.8 amps. each.
Dash illumination = ??. I guess these 5 bulbs would = about 1.0 amps.

So it looks like 5.38 amps with rear 10 watt bulbs total. Or 4.58 amps with OEM bulbs. This is just calculated so real current should be measured (with engine running).

[stevedmc]

His previous post was removed because it offered no advice, just pissing and moaning about current batteries and his days working on trains.

:TrainWreck:

[dhaney]

Aw Bill, you edited what you had written. It was 100% dead on, in terms of what batteries are today, in that they truly are 3-5 year batteries.

I came back to agree on your note, because that has exactly been my experience with several cars in the last few years. Perhaps because of our year round warm weather down here, but 4 years seems to be the life of a decent battery.

Wonder what "cost cutting" process short changed their previous longer lifespan?

For my Delorean I've gotten as much as 10 years out of a battery, Optima and using a Battery Tender when the car is going to sit for long periods.

I'm as old as Bill and don't recall car battries ever getting too many years of life 3-5 is about normal. Besides they are fairly cheap considering their use and importance.what they provide, I can't even imagine the cost of a battery that was built to last 10-15

Dan

[Bitsyncmaster]

Batteries cost about $40 twenty years ago. Now you rarely find them less than $80. I seem to remember 5 to 7 years of life back then. The problems were shorted or open cells. These days they just seem to loose cranking power with age.

My Optima yellow top is now going on 5 years. No sign of it dying yet.