Well, its been a while since I've been around here, but I have been having a problem and I cant figure out the answer. So I turn to the best place that I know to get answers for this type of thing.

I started college this fall, and since I started I have been having a problem with my car. I leave my car out in the school parking lot for a week or so at a time. I don't need my car for the most part while I'm at school so I only drive around about once a week or so.

Now this is where my problem is. Every week almost when I come out to my car, the battery is dead. It never fails that the battery will be dead when I go to my car. I had the battery tested at an Autozone after a 3 hour drive back to my home and it tested Good so I don't think its the battery. Also, when I drive the car more than just once a week, once every 2 days or so, I don't have this problem. The car runs fine.

I measured the current from the battery to the rest of the electrical and read .4 Amps. Now I know that the car will pull some amperage as it sits around, the clock and the remote sensors use a little to stay online so I can open the car, but I don't know if its supposed to be that high.

I tried disconnecting most of my extra electrical systems and trying to get the car's electrical down to just the stock electrical setup, but I couldn't get it to drop below .4

As for my extra electrical, I have two amps, a CarPC, a touchscreen for the PC underglow lighting, an AutoPage alarm w/Remote Start; I installed all of these except the alarm which I had a professional shop do (cant get the warranty without it) and I know all of them use an accessory wire so that they should not be able to pull any Amperage unless I turn the car on.

So I was wondering if anyone else had had this problem or something similar, or if someone could go measure the amperage from their battery to the car's electrical system and help me get a baseline of what its supposed to be.

Sorry for the long post, but I figure the more information I give, the easier it might be for someone else to diagnose my problem. Thanks in advance for the help.

 

Disconnect negative and see if it dumps..if not, it's the car pulling amperage. My brother's car sat for a month or two at a time while he was out at Penn State and it started right up!

 

CURRENT NOT AMPERAGE

wow that bugs me lol

 

My bad! Dang

 

Okay, I'm confused, did I state current and amperage backwards or did tmrepp?

Also, tmrepp, when you say to disconnect negative and see if it dumps what do you mean?

Right now I am testing the system by disconnecting the positive wire from the battery and measuring the amperage between the battery terminal and the wiring to the car. Am I measuring it correctly?

 

amperage does not exist, its a very improper term and doesn't exist. current units are amps but amperage does not exist

 

Oh, right, okay I understand now.

Do you have any idea of what the current that is being pulled form a stock car is? I think .4 Amps is too much, but I cant find what is causing it to pull that much.

 

I switched it up.

Disconnect negative as in when you park at school, open the hood and take a 10mm to the battery to take off the negative terminal. See if you can start it after that, if not, you've got battery issues.

As to if you're measuring correctly, yes you are.

ps. Nebster, no need to be an ___ about it. You made your point and corrected me, thank you. Sorry, I'm not trying to sound like a ***** but chill out please.

 

delete me please quoted myself accidentally.

 

i am very very chill

 

Alright good, I didn't mean to come across blunt, hope I didn't. Any ideas about his problem? I was just suggesting something to troubleshoot it. I'm not able to help when it comes to much of anything electrical.

 

Okay, I'll do that this week. Any other suggestions in the mean time?

 

From me? Nothing I can think of. Sorry!

 

haha dude read half my posts i'm more blunt than a ... well... blunt. but my point is that i'm trying to help educate the community, the internet can be a great asset but also a horrible place where people can get bad information

how long have you been in school? my worry is that the batt has lost its charging power, you may just have to get a new one. or bring the batt to like auto zone and have it tested. whats the voltage you're getting at the positive terminal?

 

Like I said in my first post, I did have it tested at autozonr after a 3 hour drive home and it tested good at autozone.

The battery read 12.32V just a min ago.

 

sounds like you have something shorting out, my car sits for a week at a time and i have zero problem so i think something may be shorted out, i have no idea what it could be, my suggestion would be to just start it every 3 or so days

 

I figured it was something shorting out, but could you or someone else go measure the current of a working battery? So when I'm checking for whatever is causing the open circut I can tell when I've found the problem. If I know that I should be able to fix it.

 

By that logic, nothing exists. That's fundamental nihilism. Besides, I don't think Andre Marie Ampere and Charles Augustin de Coulomb much appreciate you relegating their fundamental principles of electricity to "non-existent" status.

Regardless, a 0.4A draw is way, way, way too much. You have some peripheral that's not shutting down. The ECU's backup circuit will generally show itself as a load of about 0.01A, generally negligible.

Disconnect your negative battery terminal, and touch the probes of a DVM set to measure amperes, one to the terminal, and one to the post. Then, disconnect stuff one thing at a time until the load disappears (or pull fuses, one at a time).

 

while i'm not about to get in an argument. let me clarify, using the word amperage instead of the word current is incorrect. you don't say ohmage do you? no you say resistance or impedance.

 

Okay, thank you Dr. Isotope. I was thinking about just disconnecting everything, but it didnt dawn on me to do it through the fuses, that makes it easier to test.