EASILY Identify Vehicle Battery Draining Problems(Parasitic)

in this video I will show you the easiest way to troubleshoot a vehicle that has a battery which drains down overnight or over a few days of not using the vehicle let's get started the first thing you're going to do is rule out the battery as being the cause of your problem as batteries get older the place could start to short out causing the battery to drain down when it sits for hours at a time so the thing to do is when you're done driving the vehicle for the day the alternator was running charging up the battery you're going to disconnect the negative from the battery and you're going to leave it disconnected overnight in the morning when you go to connect this back on to the battery if the vehicle starts right up and you don't have the problem with the battery being drained down anymore then clearly there is something in the vehicle that is draining the battery down if you still have the same problem where the battery is not strong enough to turn the engine over then definitely replace your battery when the wires initially connected to the battery you're going to notice a spark and the reason for that there's a surge of current going into the vehicle charging up capacitors powering circuit boards and usually that current is under one amp usually 300 to 750 milliamp and then after a set duration maybe around fifteen seconds twenty seconds that current should drop to a level between 25 and 50 milliamps if the current being drained from the battery is well above 50 milliamps then the battery can drain down over time from sitting when you do this test I'm about to show you make sure that there's no light on your hood if there is a light on your hood remove the bulb because that's going to interfere with this test using an inexpensive digital meter you can pick these up at Harbor Freight they're very cheap they're around $5 you going to set the meter to DC current I have it on 10 amps and the 10 amps setting let's put this on put that right there so you can see it I'm going to disconnect this clamp again I'm just going to show you how the current flows in going to take the positive put it on the clamp and I'm going to touch this and you're going to look here 0.5 would be a half of an amp 0.01 would be 10 milliamps and you could tell right here that's 720 or so that's 530 160 and you can see it dropping all the way back and we're at 30 25 to 30 milliamps that's what you should see when you check your battery if you have a digital multimeter before I connect the digital meter back up again to perform the test what you're going to do is expose all your fuses you have a fuse compartment under your hood as well as under the dash place this here always start on the 10 amp setting if you start on a 200 milliamp setting you're going to blow the few so leave it on a 10 amp to make life easy you're going to take a jumper wire you connect that over there and the other one you can take another jumper wire that has a wide enough jaw to clamp on to the post and we're going to touch it again we're going to let it settle down right now it's at 160 milliamp and we're down probably around 25 not even 20 mili-amps what you would do is while this is connected and you can have an assistant watch the meter and you see a reading of a hundred milliamps or 200 milliamps you're going to go to each one of the fuses and pull them one at a time and watch the meter if the meter drops way down to where it should be between 25 and 50 milliamps you then found the right circuit and then you can inspect just that circuit to find out where the problem is go to every single one as well as under the dash and you will find the problem if the reading on the meter does not drop from that higher than normal current reading many times in the past I've seen a faulty regulator in the alternator caused the problem of draining down the battery you can go over to the alternator pull the wiring harness off the alternator as well as any other wires attached and take a look at the reading if you see the reading go back down to where it should be between 25 and 50 milliamps then you're going to know your alternator is the problem it does not get easier than I showed you just have an assistant watching the meter while you're pulling fuses and if none of the fuses work check the alternator there is one more thing I would like to show you when removing fuses from the inside of the vehicle the door will most likely be open make sure you push in the button on the door jamb or have an assistant do so while you're removing the fuses if you do not push this button the interior light will be on and you will not know when you found the correct circuit when you pull out the fuse because the light will be on inside the vehicle drawing current from the battery if you enjoyed this video please rate it a thumbs up subscribe and post links to this video on other websites and blogs also be sure to check out my video playlist as well thank you very much for watching

Channel: electronicsNmore

Views: 1,343,786

Rating: 4.8540459 out of 5

Keywords: battery, draining, vehicle, car, boat, marine, troubleshooting, how to, fix, repair, solve, locate, lead acid, tutorial, ChrisFix, diy, make, hack, auto, Scotty Kilmer, how to easily identify parasitic drain, how to locate car battery drain, easily find parasitic drain, asbestos, finding parasitic drain, step by step, find cause of car battery drain, troubleshooting parasitic drain, car battery drains overnight, lawyer, pharmaceutical, donate car, cancer, phone, electronicsnmore, insurance, home mortgage

Id: XH2wdHBZ6eE

Length: 6min 14sec (374 seconds)

Published: Mon May 23 2016