Ford F150: Battery Dies Overnight

you're welcome back to the self man on channel because oh three Ford f-150 here customer complaint is the battery dies overnight needless to say I tried to do a video on it yesterday but when I checked it out everything was fine I actually checked it out three times in a row what that entails is you know obviously checking the battery voltage better condition it's got a new battery apparently the battery has been changed two times now continues to happen had it at another shop they shot parts Canada they did an ignition switch they unplugged the radio lays on the seat right now they unplug the remote start and plug the trailer brake controller a few other things I came from Ward all I had on his list but in either case you know nothing has helped so this is vintage Ford it's very very common for the gem modules to fail and that's exactly what I expected to see however yesterday when I tested it battery voltage was good it's like 12 point 7 volts through an amp clamp around it has drawn two hundred milliamps certainly won't kill the battery overnight on a brand new battery and then after about 40 minutes or so it would drop down to less than 50 milliamps and that's perfect that's actually how the system works so I started up you know fiddle with stuff on the inside lock unlock that kind of things left the doors latched did it again again you know 40 minutes or so later amperage write down that it for the third time and said well you know must be the problems intermittent obviously the customer insists that it goes dead every single night cannot start the next day so at that point it's five o'clock I go home I come in this morning just for the heck of a I check battery voltage and it's like 11.6 okay that's kind of odd you know unless the batteries you know salt fading and kill itself but it's brand new so you know kind of unlikely but foolishly I did not have the doors open and latched just for the heck of it I grabbed my ant meters living under the negative battery took battery terminal off and I think strong like three amps I can't get to the fuse box out open the door so that's where I'm at something happened in you know the eight hours I was gone last night on the vehicle something turned on something sort of make the draw I think it was relatively soon so what we're gonna do today in an effort to find this after that long-winded intro I'm gonna take the Pico I'm gonna put it on a long time basis like you know 24 hours across the screen or however long we can set it when they have clamp I put a volt meter on it and just let it go let it sit here all day know of course that it did start this Mart perfectly fine if you didn't know what the battery voltage was you won't have had any idea was low so that's what I'm gonna do I've already opened the doors and latched him like to say it was my mistake that I didn't do that before I went home but after testing it three times in a row and having to come up good I was kind of skeptical that I was gonna find the problem obviously there's some kind of issue so here's the Sun up way to have like side you have Pico hooked up I've got an amp clamp on it probably should change the battery in at first and then just monitoring battery voltage and pause from I haven't I don't have screen recording software on this surface Pro here but we can see we have hour and 23 minutes across the screen it'll record up to 32 screens currently our battery voltage is a smidge about 12 and our amperage draw is going to be around that 200 milliamps so yeah we're just gonna let it run not unusual on these Ford's to see you know key off a 200 210 milliamp draw and that's just waiting for the you know gem mod or you know central timer module to shut off okay it takes about 40 minutes so I'm just gonna put power on the surface pro there so it doesn't go dead and don't do my other work give you guys a quick update so here I just stopped the scope real quick about 30 minutes or so you can see time our amperage draw was that the 200 it stepped down and now we're reading you know near zero you know if we get the average here I think you'll find it's 40 milliamps 30 15 somewheres in there below 50 anyways voltages stand steady so I just wanted to show you that one my pin here and then it's only been on for oh gosh what an hour and some change here look back oops hitting the wrong vine geez there we go hour 23 minutes and then hour and a half we'll say it just round it off so we're gonna let that keep the keep rolling here alright guys so the problem is occurring and anybody who is observant will notice that my time is often when we started where we're at now I neglected to lock the doors on initial one so about an hour so into I had to start over ed is essentially a lock the doors current draw voltage trace we can see here we're about 250 milliamps you know across this line 200 amps it steps down this is you know 40 minutes in the module times out and for let's see about oh gosh now we're in 20 minutes we're just at zero zero amps or near zero 15 milliamps let's say and then all of a sudden something has happened here and something has turned on and I was in the middle of working on another vehicle so about an hour's worth I haven't been able to come over here and look at this until now so what I want to do is I want to restart it because we're either having a problem with my amp clamp or the problem is currently happening get it currently happening I like that joke an ER almost huh let's see so we are right now we're drawing about three and a half amps oh man I'm not you sees an old touchscreen thing so let's see I'm gonna take my amp clamp off from the device and it is calibrated so it is at zero I'm gonna stick it back on so that reading is legit folks so this vehicle sat for several hours or well over an hour before whatever current draw happens is happening and you can see our voltage is dropping now you know we're just below 12 volts and like I say we are drawing about three and a half amps so that's pretty interesting that it has to sit this long for this to happen but thankfully it has happened so I'm gonna go eat some lunch I don't think the problems going to go away and then we're gonna come back and figure out what it is all right lunch is over our current draw is still here I guess we can speed up this time basis it's kind of hard when I was it's hard but it's difficult working out a couple cars at the same time and still trying to keep a video going as it should we can see about three and a half amps is where we're at so we are gonna set this to the side and if anything changes on that I would let you know what we're gonna do is voltage drop across the tops that crap let's go JK fuses in it and I don't want to tear them all apart which had a thermal imager but we're going to do some voltage drops just across the fuses that are easy to do it really just don't feel hot we'll go across ones that are easy to do kind of lose my train of thought here see if there's any draw on those we quickly could just probably pop over the alternator let me just do that real quick that's where you guys can see it our zero yeah crap I'm not even in the screen fellas mouth it does have to believe me whatever all right so let's zero this out all there's a big consumer bad lady is gonna be a problem awesome need thermal imager that alternator is hot to the touch why would it why would that things start drawing current two hours later let's just see oh it's got my clamp going backwards holy schnikeys get in there little fella oh yeah come on zero you freak all right I got to get it away from the magnetic field sorry guys just man I'll show you the screen in a second she's a big consumer this thing all but all I hear is drawing over an and two amps why did that just change all my laptop got on plug does this frickin plug-in messing with this thing no it's not okay plug that the all-nighters drawing two hands that's awesome we got lucky in some better be lucky this thing turn on how you turn this thing on what Thunder I have no idea [Music] I think so it's a wing down battery there you go get me another 9-volt it's interesting though and that is not our whole current draw this I don't think it is oh boy she turned out not only that fancy Chinese Jones all right fans like that so valve cover 81 degrees 81 degrees or 83 degrees on the valve cover alternator 112 ish 115 117 depends on where we shine the laser beams it's quite the pattern that throws yeah so 118 degrees is the max on the element like I say under hood temperature rough average you know 80s so is that all the problem I don't know it's a problem let me show a movie stuff here then with crappy in the video stuff today I should have used my laptop that's we could have screen recording option all right so we're zeroed out it was a current draw here almost four amps 3.7 will say three point eight that is coming out of the battery a reezy row it up to the all mayor here that's two so that's interesting what in the Thunder is going on mm hmm hmm let me think so we may still end up doing voltage drop across the fuses however I get some direction first wish I had a thermal imager hey there's Canada nobody got hurt I'm not liable if you did you know many times you over here it's not all there sometimes I neglect to check it but you know that's another dingdong worked on this last never take the backup I wonder what they were doing in here hey look that one's not even tight yeehaw ironically enough here the same people that worked on this one I same people that worked on that Jeep we did in this morning--i that we did a video on okay somebody's been down here doing some fancy wiring it's all there is toasty about 20 on this side matters get a I'll get it never mind you just stay there and light light he's plugs in these forwards this stick him way down inside they're usually always broken you if this one is an unplugged now we will connect the current draw oops words over here I'll check the current draw Oh monkey I'm having a hell of a time today okay there's that I'm just gonna set it down grab my current clamp it's so much easier with a score screen recorder but no Oh Hannah I didn't break it just when we unplug Mjolnir has no current go zero Zippo nada so red trace is at zero however we're going back up here mr. 9 it is I'm in here zero Zippo not back down all Nader plugged in we are back to you know three point eight ish something like that okay hook gonna really get what's changing Oh stopping okay all knitter unplugged draw goes back to zero again the red trace well then we have three wires what can happen can we still just have a faulty alternator let's grab the wiring diagram see who's who lectures PCM is not waking up and doing something funky here I would think if it was we would have more of a draw but we still don't account for all the amperage very interesting so I got us a diagram here we have red wood light or light green with red so that it's light green with red that's and what's it going to be like our L terminal I guess it would be so through the ignition switch through a fuse through the instrument cluster bulb so key off we should have nothing on this one miss make sure it just works test light works red with light blue lightly touch it no crap flow there other one jumps over the alternator to the rectifier and the other wire are orange would light blue goes directly to the battery through the relay that one should be full time power and it is so theoretically yeah I bet the rest of our conserve our consumer it's gonna be on that wire in which case the alternator essentially is being turned on let's just test that real quick cuz we're looking for what a total of over many amps we're looking for three point eight let's just see how many amps are drawn on this wire let's just make sure our problem is still here now that it's cooled down again ah our problems gone now cuz it cooled down nope all right folks wish you can see the screen here let me just figure this out real quick note we're still drawn almost four amps okay there we go we're still drawing let's say 1.5 there where is it holy smokes that is the rest of it baby okay let me change this I'll get you guys set up where you can see this zero clamped oh yeah okay so we got more current being lost than what we're reading because I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm jumping around here I just want to be able to give you guys the whole story because I'm not clicked on where I should be no because see I'm using my low amp clamp so I'm only house is based on previous experience I thought it was gonna be the gem module so I am only on the battery wired going to the junction box which essentially feeds the gem module because I just basing it on previous repairs what I should have is an amp clamp with a bigger jaw going around both negatives are both positive so I can see all the amperage draw leaving the battery because it's some of its leaving on one wire and some of its leaving on the other wire it's gonna take multiple paths so what we can see here I'll show you we have a bigger draw than I initially diagnosed but we did find the problem let me get my amp clamp going there the correct direction and you can see we are drawing hopefully you guys can see red trace again about you know five point eight amps and that is just on the power wire feeding the alternator coming directly from the battery so that's five point six we'll say we've got another you know what ampere so here so we'll call that seven amps total and where can we go to grab both of these let's red face come up here it's on the screen you're not see I can't get my jaws closed so I'm not gonna get an accurate reading I don't have I got to get a different amp clamp yeah unfortunately I cannot so that is my problem you even if we go underground I can't grab both of them needless to say the way the alternator works the fact that you know nothing is turning on to turn it on will say you know internally regulated because it has now packed the regularly rectifier everything in the alternator there's no input being turned on to it so we're good 110 percent is the alternator and you know like I say if we could do you know we just have to do the math and add them up you know this thing has a massive ampere trawl and it's actually going up now it's actually up above 7 amps right now this certainly will kill the battery overnight absolutely why and the Thunder did that take hours for that to happen I have no idea but I'm glad that we were diligent and waited that somewhere don't lose it and that we waited for this to happen and just listened to our customer he was adamant that this truck would die overnight even though it took us several hours to pinpoint it even though we didn't work out for that long but the scope did we just left there in a long time basis so that's I'm a hundred and ninety-nine percent certain there's nothing else that can be put the alternator on and then you know double check our you know amperage draw over time but yeah that's it fantastic never gonna get this right I just did a whole outro sweet 1/2 and had the radio on the entire time tell me and I almost forgot to do one more tank and tires trucks done diagnose all-nighter 100% confirmed yes I made a few mistakes along the way because I didn't have jaws big enough on the amp clamp to go round both negatives for both positives total current draw you know from the battery listen either here over there I guess the outcome is the same apologize for not having screen recording software on the surface here yet so the camera work is a little sketch but hopefully we all learned a little bit something from it why did they all inator take two hours to all of a sudden create this 7 amp draw I don't know doesn't I mean it's kind of interesting but you can you can really get caught in that little rabbit hole y'all doing that over and over again to see if it's the exact same time but it is one of this it's not gonna make the outcome in different Tanner it's getting the guy in s Smith if we get the job we'll put the alternator on it and double-check it and ship it down the road in the meantime I got to get working subscribed patron socials nothing popped up there I ended that but yeah yeah you know what to do those are my reviewers if I can do it you can do it thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: South Main Auto Repair LLC

Views: 391,368

Keywords: battery, dead battery, ford, battery drain, battery (invention), diesel, battery dies overnight, ford f150 battery draining overnight, car battery dies overnight, car, battery keeps going dead, how to test a battery, parasitic battery draw, car battery, parasitic battery drain, alternator, fix, dead battery overnight, car battery dies while sitting, ford battery drain, how to do a parasitic draw test using a multimeter

Id: acdNBBdJWF8

Length: 22min 56sec (1376 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 15 2018