Diagnosing Battery Draw (Battery Goes Dead Overnight)

you're welcome back to the self-made Auto channel that is a 1999 Honda Odyssey here and the battery is going dead overnight not dead dead but low enough where the car will crank essentially what they call parasitic draw now before we begin there are a bazillion variables on how to do parasitic drop testing we are fortunate enough to have an old enough vehicle here without you know the bazillion modules in it that need to sit for hours and timeout so be aware before you follow any of my testing methods if you choose to do so it may not work on your vehicle oftentimes on newer vehicles I will use an inductive amp clamp because leaving the battery hooked up it's the best thing you can do and like I say we won't get into all the variables however we can discuss them in the comment box and I'm sure a lot of people will bring them up some of the old-school ways you guys will work cars a long time will likely remember you know back even in early fuel injection days we could always take a test light stick it you know on the battery post touch the corresponding battery cable and if there's current flow when there shouldn't be our lights gonna light and in this vehicle we have current flow but like I say that doesn't always work particularly on modern day vehicles that will burn you the method I'm going to use on this vehicles I'm just gonna use my DV o n now you don't need a big big fancy one like this you can use a regular DV oh I'm as long as the fuse can support the lowness being drawn though this has a 10 amp fuse in the back of it and make sure you hook your meter of track 2 because remember they typically have a different port for amperes versus voltage so I'm gonna take a district Andhra battery cable already on the hook that in one of that battery today when I went to work on it we will hook on the battery positive come down two amps internal and we're gonna have a look see what's going on here now this van does seem to settle around this 250 milli amp range I did take a quick peek at it yesterday I didn't have a chance to track it down other than the fact that this quarter nap draw stays there forever and you can see the little humps coming up in the graph now that is the security light that's bleeping on and off on the inside now sometimes looking at these and graphing mode can give you a little bit of a clue particularly if it's like a rear wiper motor that's trying to park all of a sudden you'll see like a quarter half draw that like a four amp draw and a quarter amp draw and sometimes looking at and graphing mode can give you an idea as to you know where the draw might be coming from 250 milliamps is too much on these vehicles these older vehicles will typically shut down you know near 0 you know 25 you know 50 milliamps something along those lines another form of testing we could use is the inductive and clamp which you know which I told you about a little bit ago best option on newer vehicles now if you're using an amp clamp and let's say we got a low draw like this you know 250 milliamps sometimes accuracy of the inductive amp clamp gets a little sketchy it's hard to see you know stuff like that I'm going to show you a little trick you can do for that meter I'm just gonna very gingerly put a pair of vise grips on here gives me something to hook my jumper wire to again I dunno you don't then blow me up in the comments that this does not work on every vehicle sometimes this doesn't work however in this case it will so we have our clamp on there essentially our battery cables hooked up if somebody went in there and hit the key this battery would go up in a cloud of smoke we're going to take our inductive amp clamp that you can see here on the screen of the Pico or you know zeroed out zero amps gonna put it on to our lead we see we're just got to kind of pick an average here you know let's move the cursor down here for it kind of pick the average what's going on Oh 259 milliamps so that's pretty good it confirms a couple things first of all it confirms accuracy of our inductive clamp versus what we're seeing on the meter and that's a good thing to see now sometimes looking at this you're like yeah you know I'd like to see a little more detail or I'd like to you know if I make a change when I'm fiddling with something I'd like to be able to see it a little easier so what you can do is make yourself a multiplier take your cable and what we'll do is we'll just put like five wraps in us we got two three four so there's five and the important thing is you know how many wraps you have of wiring one two three four five and that now when we stick our and plant by there we should be seeing five times the current position okay so now let's move our cursor here again we'll come up here and get our average 1.2 I'm terrible with math so if we do let's see 120 oops for 1.2 rather we'll divide that by the number five oops crap I put little parentheses things around to look like I'm some kind of a scientist I'm doing that wrong divide that by five and now we're down you know to 40 so essentially 240 milliamps pretty close to what we were actually measuring so that's just a little trick grandma taught me essentially making yourself a inductive client current multiplier so there is a few couple of tips and tricks for you I multiply the current on your inductive probe so hopefully that is helpful to somebody I dunno it is helpful to me when I'm doing current draws that are that are low and I want to see it in a little better detail see it's changed you know you can see a dramatic change so yeah I guess that's enough rambling and not much in the teaching I guess the end of a much deeper but what it's worth and without all that stuff being said we will carry on and now the most important thing is where the heck let's draw going so let's get our meter back up here we're gonna go to amps internal again get this back up when things settle out and turn off inside the vehicle we're back to our 250 milliamps what we have to do now is find where the draw is of course that's our main objective we do know that we have a 250 milli amp draw indefinitely hours from now it'll always be sitting here you know to 2250 somewheres in that neighborhood so we're gonna leave our meter hooked up here's where there is another bit of variables dependent on the vehicle so you have to kind of know what you're working on prior to what test method you're going to use typically you know the current is gonna go out some sort of device it could be leaking in the alternator so we can take our amp clamp we can just you know throw it around the alternator there or just unhook the alternator that would be an option or the other method is we could use our voltmeter on a millivolt setting and go across each fuse and measure the voltage drop across fuses or on this car it's old enough we can actually start plucking fuses and then find the circuit that's on look on a wiring diagram find power distribution see what that circuit runs and then take the testing from there see that what I'll do we'll just put this in a digital meter hopefully that display will be a little bit bigger for it oh alright so there we are you can kinda see it over there in the corner we're gonna start with the underhood fuse box again there are variables you start doing this on a modern-day car it will burn you you will be chasing your tail I'm essentially gonna go through and just start plucking fuses in a row don't care what they run I'm just looking for one that kills the draw or changes the draw but like I say knowing what the fuse is is not important at this point and again this is not the method you'll want to use on a newer car because all of a sudden you just turn the module off and I just turned it on and you're waiting again and you just kind of screwed yourself on that and there we go look at that right yeah we went over amperage because everything's we can back up that should drop to 250 here or there abouts okay so we're back to our baseline where we started and we're on this future here's this big 40 ampere my gut tells me this probably runs a whole lot more fuses it's a big 40 ampere that has taken our draw down to Zippo stuff that back in just for pooping laughter I'm gonna finish going through the box here just be sure I don't know if that feeds all their circuits in here or if it's going to feed internal fuses inside the vehicle I think those are spare fuses are you these two like I said you can use your voltmeter and just measure voltage drop across the fuses you have to have a little chart but they what the Bulls drop supposed to be Power Pro makes that chart handy little chart so it was that big 40 hamper which they're calling the backup accessory fuse probably runs through the admission to switch back of accessory now we know what circuit our drawers on so and logged in to Mitchell on demand here I want to find the identification of the under hood fuse box sometimes in the wiring diagrams these will be labeled by numbers and that's what we want to see let's see your zoom in on this little fella let's see we pulled that big sucker out so in here it's number 54 let's scroll down here number 50 for backup accessory that feeds fuses 9 10 11 12 and 13 and passenger under - fuse box all right so let me get something right here good no it's a key to success that's true let's see we got number 9 10 11 well 13 should be easy to remember that is in the passenger-side ran that down made that mistake people alright so we don't really know what those fuses are yet so what we'll do we can take a peek we will look at the wiring diagram power distribution and see who those are they might be able to give us a clue perhaps experience-based what puce number was that 45 they were common 42 4 & 5 keep scooting down six it's always on the last diagram no matter what you do it knows Hughes 54 I'm sorry not 45 choose 54 all right sir excuse 54 underhood few spots if the 40 amp that comes out of there goes a yellow wire goes to the passenger side few spots and it's the 9 10 11 12 13 and there's nine 10 11 12 13 so that one big fuse runs these five features here there's current being drawn on one of these circuits in those circuits Oh what in Thunder we have technical difficulties alright we're back in business hurry my mouth locked up on me jump pets there we go 9 10 11 12 and 13 so it comes in what are our options here security system tell it really a combination like really interior like real a navigation audio gauge assembly sliding doors field order switch field or relay climate control we have a bazillion options passenger side multiplex control unit door multiplex PCM we have lots and lots of options if we were in the in the guessing game next best thing I think we can do is go inside find fuse you know 9 10 11 12 13 pop them out see if we can isolate it down to at least one leg of this circuit and then take it from there these numbered oh they are that's super handy until until 13 the one is the accessory socket I don't see oh there is some USB gets most plugged in there but I think the cables are just hanging plus I think they shut off on Honda's only me shut the key off I don't know no probably not that was a full time power fuse just be mindful when you go whipping that door open if your meter can't handle it poof and goes an expensive little fuse not in my case my fuses are cheap cover from my multimeter let's see here let's see that faces the front so they told me this is number nine number nine is out crap draw is still high so it is not number nine oh they're labeled on the box it's handy number 10 is out still have our current draw the meters out under the hood because like every snap my meter comes with excessively short leads over here let's see nine ten here there's a lot of eleven is out parentco still there it's always the last fuse right number twelve bingo number twelve so we are gonna take we're going to leave number twelve out our current draw currently no pun intended it's about 86 million however we had the passenger side door open we're gonna close the door we took out number number 12 when I go back outside let's look back on our diagram and we were looking for fuse I'm confused here okay it's a fuse number 12 this is the few so we've determined it's coming from a few sit before down through here and the fuse number 12 that feeds a passion multiplex unit okay so I could get kind of complicated and then it feeds the fuel filled door switch and the fuel door relay I always thought they were all mechanical on these vehicles but I must be wrong it's in the diagram let's see this solicit know lakhs okay so our current draw is either coming here or something in the multiplex control unit so we have some options we can do whatever is easiest I believe these multiplex units do unplug we could stir up some you know some other issues there we could find out where this fuel door relay is and fuel door switch and see if the current draw is coming from it and then take a diagnosis from there so I'm gonna do a little dig and see where this where these things live and then we'll make a decision as to what route we're gonna take help satisfy the curiosity of you folks asking first what the heck's a multiplex unit if you think of it like Honda's body control module they've got one on a driver's side they got one in the passenger side I don't believe these older ones you can even communicate with them so let's see here this one here is what we got this is something driver-side under - relay that's a driver side multiplex unit here's our fuse number 12 all right coming down you know 12 and 13 both but this unit number 12 comes down and it is the battery input here into the passenger side multiplex which controls a ton of stuff as you can see there a key this doors lights had like relays you know all kinds of stuff where we could have some potentials so that is I mean you guys see them you know all kinds of stuff lots of stuff so you know we could have current going into the passenger side or the patch multiplex unit and then coming out one of these wires certainly could that is always an option so keep this in mind did some pokin multiplex unit aside I did find finally under reminder and I think the door locks where am I yeah power door locks ergh I did find where is it here there's scoop acid in there it is the fuel filled door switch in the fuel filled door relay I'm assuming I always saw these where cable operated on these older ones that prevent the passenger side or the driver's side sliding door from opening when the fuel door is open that way you know you know you're getting gas kids are screaming they're trying to climb out the door and bust the fuel nozzle off car goes up in flames it prevents that that's what I'm thinking so we see here how we've got a fuel filled door switch turns on this relay now this white wire comes directly from our fuse 12 it goes in once relays activated where does it go up on this blue wire blue wire into the sliding door lock control unit in left sliding door so you know this is you know some kind of logic box here whether it locks the door excuse me or what it does I don't know I assume it locks the door would be my assumption I'm curious 250 milliamps pretty common spec on a control side of relay I think you guys would agree on that let's say you know the magnetic side of that relay the control side you know let's say that's stuck on yeah 200 2 milli amp draw I could buy that I'm curious Honda does like to use its solid state relays some of these older vans might use mechanical relays the picture always sometimes doesn't depict really what kind of relay it is this one shows you know you know coil and the whole mechanical type point system I'm wondering if we take that fuse inside if we let's say flicker it let's say you know this relays clicking on and off perhaps we can hear that and if we don't you know what do we do at that point do we dig down to get it I'm not sure where it is it doesn't indicate here perhaps weekend before we get that far because if it's out in the open locations go here let's see where this little file lives fuel filled or relay behind left rear side trim panel which I think the trim comes off these pretty easy probably easier in the multiplex you know comes out without looking alright well let's try that first before we get too far in a fuse listen to hear something why amantha go uh we might I got lucky all right I can't tell if it's in the sliding door or where it is favored by the devil it's just a dirt devil don't worry all right so what you gonna do I'm gonna be flickering the fuse up there up there in the band you're gonna need to use your ears we need to know if the flickering noise is coming back there by your soda can which put a customer's car it doesn't matter we need to know the clicking noises coming from your soldier can area or in that sliding door we can't tell okay okay you're gonna be our ears and you're gonna relate to the people what you're hearing I hear ya I don't hear anything I'm ready when I hear in two places it's definitely in the door and then there's a noise back here like just the clicking yeah okay okay [Music] yeah there's two noises and then it just ends up being a click and do you hear like a fool inside the door it's both it's both in the door in like back here oh it's way back there that's where the light clicking is coming from yeah yeah I don't worry about show me point to use your fingers back there huh yeah all right we're good today don't you hate that thank you I know you do good job yeah you're like a little bit oh yeah so what was it this vicinity yeah you sure oh right underneath this loose panel maybe [Music] so here's what I'm thinking I thought I could hear something in that door to my flicking that fuse in so that's kind of cool yeah I bet to look up some theory and operation on these and you know the closer motors when the door shuts and then a cable pulls in and then it latches however my thought at this point is the fact that when I open the field door and close the fuel door the flickering doesn't change this driver's door appears to be shut and latched yeah it's definitely latched we can make sure that it functions I'm half tempted to go after the relay because the control wires you know from the switch are going to go to it and see you know perhaps we have two problems maybe the switch you know sending a faulty the signal which I think probably is because it didn't change open or close so hopefully you guys are following that I don't really I guess I don't really need to know the theory at this point here but that's just a little bad I think these quarter turns come off relatively easily so why don't we zip this off find where the relay is hiding and yeah we got there screw seatbelt back shot well we got the stone go stuff or the backseats here which have marks on it that screw has marks not one who's been back to your fellas doing a little exploratory surgery I popped the speaker grille off pops right off mrs. old did say she heard it in this vicinity so I'm curious if we popped the speaker out we got a big enough hole instead of pulling this whole quarter trim off if we can at least get to the wiring or perhaps see relay wherever it may be hiding way down here way down there there's a relay holder with a relay down down here and bought in there of course you can't see my fingers but er that's way down at the bottom I don't know if I'm gonna be able to reach out with my digits I got my shirt pocket Oh somebody's keys that's a bad bad habit mr. Jones Oh actually they're the keys of this card never put keys in your pocket yeah so that's a really I don't even know if I got the fuse in it still let me go put the fuse back in it put the fuse back in it see this goes this direction the double dong or holder it's in the part this morning don't drop it little buddy I just want to see if it clicks let's see this is pretty difficult to do blindly here we go ready so that is our little guy there all right yeah you go right through the speaker hole so that is to relay what's up mrs. oh we found it we had to reach in kind of give birth to it but you know like an old cow I like to go raw dog you know what I mean huh all right well we are onto something there that's accessory power so looking at diagram we know that our relay is being activated we know our relay is not you know physically stuck in the on position because well frankly we hear it clicking of course we could we could test that real quick we just check continuity because somebody's gonna you know say something about that let's go back to our diagram that's more like it we've got about a 20 milliamp draw and every time it flickers there again like I say here we can get a little more a little more detail on this for you I guess we about a hundred milliamps every time it flickers the bigger hump that's gonna be one our security light on the inside comes on so you guys can see that and I'm kind of scrolling across there I'm completely happy with a 20 milliamp draw older car not uncommon to see that I expected it to be around 50 so here is the fuel fill door switch it has spent a full pint power I have to believe that once the fuel fill door is closed the switch is open as indicated here in the diagram because it wouldn't make sense that you know popcorn was passing through it at all time so let's assume it's open and then when you open the gas door you know makes the connection here through the switch comes down to the green wire turns on our relay which is what we're seeing so at this point I would have to believe that our fuel filled door switch it's faulty making our relay stay on all the time and you know essentially that's sending you know a command to this sliding where they can't slide the door lock control unit which this made this make goof-up the sliding door there of course it's gonna have the potential if you've got the gas door open and somebody opens that passionate air driver's door you know that's gonna be could be an issue already this is an older guy who doesn't have any children de semanas dog I don't think he's gonna have that problem I'm gonna leave the option up to him how he wants me to proceed leave the relay out forget about it or I'm gonna recommend to him fixing the fuel door switch and take it from there now I do know that he had mentioned to me his head has been having some problems with the power sight doors and actually thought that was part of his draw so he it had the switch turned off to him so I guess short talking the customer that is that is my best assessment the switch is faulty it's leaving the relay engaged right that's pretty much all it can be because I needs its power side Swift has a constant round it needs power sent to it through that fuel door switch now granted this circuit here could be shorted to power that is the other variable highly unlikely but it is the other variable if you filled door switch is the most likely culprit and headley likely are cause short of tearing the quarter panel off 100% verifying that that circuit is not shorted the power would be the only way to be 100% definitive or 95 right now Enbridge draw is still very low that's good what's interesting this door is humming yeah this root latch is not functioning as it should comes open it will mechanically latch however it will not electronically release yeah and then it gives us a warning beats okay and then that side over there stop that halfway close that that door should pull in and latch yeah so you can hear that one latch okay so that's pretty interesting he's got two issues going on here yeah no warning beep from this one and then this door latches so okay so he's got two issues going on here we got the fuel door problem and then we have the rear latch problem or closer motor I don't want time to cause them the closer motor because the cable motor that actually opens and closes the door is completely separate give you an idea what her van needs a new hinge to spark the buck for a while ago so this is the roller hinge assembly I think on this car weren't it here at fine when these up the rollers has gone bad allow them to go out can't you office in there a little different before you blast me in the comments here is the rear latch let me sit inside the door and then of course you've got all the electrical mechanism that can operate it electrically and then the actual mechanical cables that go to the handles and locks and so on you know like here I actually did a video on this but the video footage was lost unfortunately it was on a laptop that I had the hard drive crash and recovery well that's a laptop crashed like off my desk and a spot on the hard drive and we're able to almost all the data except for a few things one which included how to replace one of these what's kind of odd that saving this one but I want to do it again Larry did the one this man and I'm a builder though that will randomly pop open just the rear latch door doesn't pop open like you know kids falling off the street pop open but it pops open nonetheless and then the alarm goes off here so we'll go put this back on the shelf we're gonna leave it at that for right now folks it's a smidge past 5:00 the guy wants this car back for the evening crews I'm gonna leave the relay out it's kind of redundant to put it back in because it's not functioning anyways and it's just killing the battery give him the choice and see if he wants us to tear into the driver's side sliding door fix you know the lock actuator there the closer latch whatever you want to call it get that problem resolved and because obviously it can't disconnect itself electronically you know by pushing the button you know you have to pull the handle mechanically yeah maybe they'll just leave it like that I don't know but the power door lock on that doesn't work either so there's you know obviously some issues going on there that could be resolved it's up to him like sits him in his dog so maybe he won't fix it same thing with the fuel door yeah you know just don't open the door I guess when you're getting gas all that weight used to be in the olden days when you step to think well I'll leave it all up to the customer it says call at this point I diagnosed it here's what the problems are we'll take it from there if I do get the job to fix this I will bring you guys along so you can see what's going on how to fix it I don't really know I'm sure it lives back there in the court panel we have to pop that off and you know get the new switch in here whatever we gotta do um it doesn't matter what does matter is that you go down there and click that subscribe button ring the bell find us on our socials find us on patreon and just remember viewers if I can do it you can do it thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: South Main Auto Repair LLC

Views: 304,476

Keywords: battery, odyssey, battery drain, battery dies overnight, honda pilot battery dead, honda odyssey battery drain, honda battery dead, honda battery drains overnight, dead battery, drain, parasitic, parasitic battery draw, parasitic draw test, battery (invention), battery test, battery goes dead, battery drain test, car battery drain, battery drain fix, parasitic battery drain test, parasitic drawn / drain., low battery, how to test a battery

Id: 2Y8t5hIFtAk

Length: 38min 25sec (2305 seconds)

Published: Thu May 03 2018