musclecar201

Alright this is going to be quite a long speech so be prepared...

For the time I have owned my car the batteyr continues to die around every 2 months. It would start fine the day before then die over night, to the point where it couldn't even be jumped, NO volts from the battery what so ever. About a month ago I checked to see if something was drawing power form the battery, I got a reading of .29amps on my multimeter. So then I started pulling fuses and checking after each one, none of them stopped this dreaded drain. I also thought it could be the alternator. Unhooked it, still a drain. So i put my car up on ramps and un hooked the starter and the drain stopped. I reconnected and its back to .29 amps.

So then this morning I started the car, started right up. Then I started it again a little later and moved it out of the driveway to park it in the street while I cleaned the leaves from teh driveway. TWO hours later, dead battery. Car fails to start, radio still works though. We attempted to jump it...nothing. So we pushed the car back into the driveway. Unhooked teh battery again, this time I'm getting 5.69amps of draw. So whatever is happening it gets to a certain point where it draws a lot of amps. I had two mechanics look at it and had no idea what it was. I think it is either the starter or solenoid but truthfully I am no mechanic. I am going to charge up the battery, test the pull, then start it and see if it drops down to .29 amps again. If so I'll have to put it on the starter or the solenoid. Wouldnt pulling a fuse stop everything else from a possible battery drain?

Opinions, help? please....

bakes85

hmm, thats quite a puzzler. especially because it lasts 2 months

musclecar201

Very much, recharged today returned to a draw of .29amps. It just seems that every two months of use it just spikes to that high amps draining the battery over night, it doesn't seem like the little draw does much of anything.

bakes85

idk man, if nobody on here can help ya i would say go to autozone or a local shop and talk to the guys there, usually theyre somewhat knowledgeable

Saculia

iTrader: (1)

Have you noticed if the drain occurs during a specific condition, such as wet weather? Maybe some water gets in somewhere and causes a short that is not normally present when things are nice and dry.

musclecar201

If it was a short tho wouldnt only short at for a little bit and not completely drain teh battery? IT also just so happens the minute I turn the car over that large amount of amps pulled disappeared.

Weather is not a factor, it had been dry for the past 2 days before.

I'm going to go to autozone with my starter, the guys near me are pretty smart.

bakes85

ha, your lucky, at my local autozone theres 2 chicks that work there that know next to nothing

annoys the hell outta me

Rolling Thunder

Well heres the deal. You have a good start by pulling out the fuses out and unfortunetly you came to the conclusion that none made a difference (i assume you pulled them all out?) So what this means is it eliminates A LOT of wiring. Now you also noted that pulling the wires off the starter killed the power drain also a good test because on the 2.8 theres 2 main points of power distrobution the starter and the junction block next to the battery and that eliminates like half of the unfused /power distribution wires. What does this leave us? It leavs us with anything that is unfused or a short before the fuse box. Which is good cuz there not much lol. Personally its better this way than if something like the accessory fuse was the one that the current was being drawn through lol. Anyways to troubleshoot this i just took a glance at my power distribution schematic for an earlier year which is probably very close if not identical to the 87. According to this at the starter motor youll have 3 power wires a batter cable and 2 heavy red wires. The fault is in one of these wires. One powers the headlights and the other powers things like the under hood light (which is fused but its not in the fuse box), the high speed blower relay, and continues on to the ignition switch and the accessory circuit breaker (things like the power locks but if you pulled this then it doesn't matter). Anyways what im getting at to further simplify this problem dissconnect one of thoes red wires at the starter and measure the current draw. By doing this I hope well find the one that has the fault in it and by seeing if the headlights work or if the power locks work we can see which circuit the red wire feeds (because both red wires should be the same so who knows which is which untill we see what dies by disconnecting it) from there we can make more test to narrow the problem even further. Good luck and let me know how it goes.

Rolling Thunder

Also i though ide mention when the hoods poped and you go to measure the current draw don't forget if you have an under hood light its drawing power too. You should remove the bulb before making tests again if you have the under hood light.

musclecar201

This is quite the information I was looking for. Fortunately I have no underhood light, power windows or locks. My car is the most stripped version possible. I will undo the wires on teh starter on wednesday and let you know.

musclecar201

Heres what I found. This dual wire is the culpret. The two red ones.



What does it go to? How should I go about finding what is wrong?

Rolling Thunder

Ok well heres the deal. If you could PM me a Email adress i can send you a schematic of the power distribution from the starter or if you register with autozone.com and look up the schematic you can look it up and see what im seeing. Long story short the autozone schematic dosnt clearly show a 2 wire connection like that (that would make sence anyways i can explain when you see the schematic) for that year so that makes it kinda complicated because they all happen to be red so the color coding doesn't help much either lol. What we have to do if figure out by disconnecting that what dies and then we can figure out which red wire is which then we can figure out what circuit is at fault from there well just "divide and conquer" starting at the middle of that circuit and figuring out if the fault is befor or after that point then divide whats left and do it again untill we find the problem. Like i said if you can PM me an email address i can kinda explain better what i mean and how well go about figuring out whats what and troubleshooting it but its just kinda hard to explain it without you being able to see the schematic to see what im talking about.

IROC563

I think this might be the same prblem im having with my 90 iroc. Could u email me the schematic for that meschrich@jessup.edu??? thanks!

musclecar201

Just to let you know I pulled out my stereo and the parasitic draw dropped down next to nothing.

However my battery just died again, I tested it and it wasn't drawing any current, the car had sat for about 2 months without getting a good drive out of it so I just think the battery died from not being recharged by the alternator and it being so cold it died. It started slow too the last time I started it. So now its off to get a new battery! Hopefully the parisitic draw doesn't come back wtih my new battery.

basudec1509

hello guys ...

its really nice post....

i just liked it....

thanks...