How To Find A Car Battery Drain

okay I'm going to show you guys how to test for a parasitic drain let me show you what tools we got here I have a I have to flip meters and a CDC amp clamp and a just a little alligator clip I like to you don't have to have this many tools really all you need is is just one one meter that has the amp jack but I have these so I use them let me show you how to set this up first thing I want to do is I want to see how much amperage is flowing through the through the battery right now because if it's over 10 amps and you stick your fuse meters in line with it you can blow out your fuse in your meter so it's a good idea to first things first is to check it with an amp clamp to make sure it's a meter you can do a parasitic drain test either on the positive side or the negative side it doesn't matter I myself find it safer to do it on the negative side well the way I my thinking in that is if I hook up my meter here and I'm working on that and some happens in you short to ground well if you're working on the negative side your short to ground you're fine you know you're not going to damage that there's just I thought feel this size less less potential for damaging it's just my personal preference you can do a drain on either side it's and whatever comes out has to come back in and current flow so pick a side I like this side better so that's what I'm going to do the way that way this one works is and put it on put on ant 40 amps this is an ac/dc right now it's saying AC so I guys switch it to DC then on zero the meter by hitting another button and 0 that's ready to go so I'm just going to put this all here and see that see like that's almost 1 amp right there that's point right now it's drawing about an amp it's going that way point nine three point nine three I tried out about an app that would be okay that's okay to hook my meter up to let me check this one owns a four amps so four amps about five six about six apps it's drawn right now I suspect that that current is a was drawing from my door being open you get both of these of a can okay right now I'm drawing total coming back to the battery that's about five point six amps that's way too high but it's probably because it got my door open going to disconnect my negative battery set it set it aside now the way I set it up is I use I use this little alligator clamp whatever you're going to call it as I give it a good make sure I got a good contact and I pull off one other let me go ahead and pull this off first off let's cover okay I'm going to hook up the alligator clip I'm using this as a spot to hook on my meter I'll show you the first let me show you how to set up this meter when you're doing an amp check I want to leave the black one here I want to put my red one here but before I hook up my meter I want to make sure these fuses are good otherwise I could be checking amperage all day and it would say zero here and I wouldn't even know it so a good thing to check is that is to check to make sure these fuses are good the way you do that is you put it on voltage fluke fluke 87's have a built in meter checker I'm sorry fuse checker G's fluke 87 s have a built-in fuse checker you'll hear a noise hear that noise that means that 10 amp fuse is good hear that noise that means that 400 milli amp fuse is good if you didn't hear that noise well you don't want to do your test because hey it would tell you you don't have any current flow so you want to check your fuses before doing just a just a good good practice so I'm going to go ahead and go to my larger jack first it's good okay so I'm going to put this on put it on amps milliamps amp setting put this on amps I'm ready to go normally your meter leads are leave them in common and this is your volts ohms and like diode check and what now but when you're dealing with amperage you got to take this common port here I'm sorry you leave the common port and you're dealing with amperage you have to move the red volt ohm lead to this amperage lead this is designed to read amperage up to 10 amps don't stick it in here because this one's only read up to 400 milliamps and if you go over depending on which jack you're in if you go over that you'll blow the fuse inside this meter and that's another reason why I use my amp clamp to see how much amperage it was drawing because I don't want to blow up this meter when I so what you do is you take out this lead I like to leave it out just for a minute I'll hook up everything and then I put it back what I'm going to set set this here so you guys can see what's going on stop and then I like to take my lead out you don't have to you can leave it in there if you want to not a big deal but I'm going to take my black lead I'm going to hook it up to this post here on the basically what I'm doing is I'm connecting my meter in series with the negative wire to battery I've got a good bite on the good bites on that negative negative cable I'm going to hook this up I got a good bite now that's hooked up I want to plug in the leads to that the big app check now I'll put it on amperage and right now it's drawing 245 right now is throwing 200 and 250 milliamps I see as you guys can see that's addressed right now it's drawing 250 milliamps and that's way too much a normal range on a car is usually you know anywhere from 5 milliamps to 20 milliamps with a maximum of 50 milliamps you don't want to go over 50 otherwise you know it's just going to drain your battery too fast now there are several ways you can go about doing this you can use an amp meter and in line with in line like this you can use an amp amp clamp or you can use your voltmeter I myself I like to use a voltmeter set on millivolts and I like to read read look for voltage drops across fuses because when you're dealing with the fuse or any connection in a in a circuit when there's current flowing you're going to have a voltage drop when you're just reading across a fuse it's so tiny that if your meter was on regular volts you probably wouldn't see it so I like to do it this way because it's fast you don't have to pull out any fuses so you're looking for voltage current flow and anytime you have current flow you're going to have a volt drop so all the all the fuses I see that read straight zeros no current flow that means there's no current flow you go on the next one you're looking for a fuse that has drop across there now I find this Way's the fastest way but you know that's tough that's my go-to check and if I don't find anything using that method then I'll go to start pulling fuses see I got my leads plugged into the common in the Volt home I got my setting on millivolts not voltage milli volts DC I want to measure looking for tiny little volt drops across okay here's my fuse box go look for some current flowing in the fuses okay got my meter on millivolts now which I'm not blocking anything all I'm going to do is read it these little parts of the fuse here a little middle tab something if you can see these or not but don't have a cameraman okay let me show you how this works see how one of my leads are not touching anything my reading is erratic and call that ghost voltage it's jumping along just bouncing and floating and let me show you what I read when I when I put my meter leads together dead zeros I would look like a short but when currents not flowing in its own and there's one side open there's no difference of potential there's no curtain there's no voltage drop you could read straight zeros and that's what you want to see you want to see straight zeros if you read anything on millivolts like point 1 volt point 2 point whatever that means there is current flowing in that circuit so first of all I checked when I read across here what's going to drop the leads across here let me try to do this with one hand so I can kind of show you what I'm looking for like see that how that's point one that means there's current flowing in that circuit right now so maybe I ought to pull this 60 amp fuse but usually these big big uses feed other fuses so it would stand to reason that whatever circuit this controls is probably a bunch of stuff might watch let me go down the line let's see if there's a another draw somewhere else see that one no draw so that circuit right there not my problem see that one no draw see this one Oh easy that is that's got current flow I'm reading point well I'm reading voltage drop across this resistor I'm a little resistor well it's kind of like a resistor it's a fuse but when you read a voltage drop across it that mean current is flowing through so I know that this 60 amp current is much is my problem see I got a 40 amp here reading dead zeros no current flowing that circuit no zero dead zeros no current flow no current flow in the green one no current flow in there and the 50 amp and go down to this 20 ampere okar flow Oh careful oh and that big one right there 40 ampere no current flow no current flow so as far as the big fuses are go which these probably feed the little fuses there's a there's a draw right there point one draw now go check all the little fuses but you get that easier to show you won't demonstrate on the big fuses but I'm going to I want to I want to I need both hands for the little fuses I just hopefully you guys can see me I'll tell you what the meter says if it's zero is I move on if it's reading a drop I notice all right this 10 after I think the little bitty fuses are hard to get to but okay reading zeroes that one's good that one's good and if when you read your meter and it's like it's jumping it means you don't have a good connection on your fuse so make sure you got a good connections you either want to see like a really good reading you don't want to see one jumping around that one's good that one's good that one's good that one's good zeros that one's good that one's good that one's good that one the good that one's good that one's good okay well looks like my only problem in this box is this one right here so I'm going to pull this fuse and then let's see if my 220 amp draw goes away set up so you can see it I'm going to pull this big black 60 amp fuse I can get it BAM that was it see how it just dropped like I said you know remember what I said less than 55 to 20 milliamps is what I should be reading well everything else besides the circuit is normal so I just found it it was pretty much exactly sure what it is or what what's the problem but you can see when this fuse is plugged in I got and plug it in 200 250 milliamps when I unplug it goes away so I'm going to go do some further research and you figure out what it is this circuit feeds and I'll go to those fuses and see I'm going to look at a schematic okay go inside and I looked up the power distribution on this particular vehicle 99 Explorer and trying to show you guys I'm looking for the basically it comes out of the battery goes to like a bus bar and all these so this big few the battery comes in feeds a bus bar and there's big fuses now one I showed you guys was a 60 amp use that feeds other fuses so and the individual fuses feed the you know other circuits so what I'm doing that I'm looking up the ones for the 60 amp view which it's not it's not showing on the front page here but I found it here it was it was fused number one I don't know how well we can read this but I'll say I make this stupid thing focus anyway yeah okay I think it focused so these are was all busbars and this is fuse one that big big black 60 amp fuse that feeds to fuse five diagram 305 let me find that rope okay I think I found it this is a from maxi fuse one this is the e mark now one had a 60 amp fuse and then said to e this is the e so from maxi fuse one basically the fuse that feed the driver's-side fuse panel I think it just says a fuse junction panel and basically I'm looking for fuse five fuse nine fuse 13 fuse one and that feeds fuse 25 which really that stuff feeds instrument cluster the the Jim module anti-theft memory seat power antenna great pressure switch brake pedal switch data link connector it's all that feeds a couple things what I'm going to do is basically I'm going to go find these fuses I'm going to pull one of them I'm going to see if my current drops if it doesn't drop I'm going to pull the next one see if my current drops until I find the one that the circuit feeds it's messed up hope that makes sense and I'm looking for a fuse 5 9 13 1 and 25 ok remember that at 60 amp use if you use number 1 inside the battery junction box feed should feed fuse number five in here which should be should be unless I got some bad information should be one two three four five that's a 10 amp which it is fuse number nine six seven eight nine which is the seven point five and it is on here so I need to take out this one this one nine point five thirteen number 20 and number number one so basically looks like looks like one five nine thirteen last but not least she use twenty five this one down here so one that one of these is going to be my draw so since I'm not disabling the door here I'm just going to pull one out and go check it with the door shut I'm just going to pull fuse one close the door go check all right and shut the door hope that wasn't it still reading 250 put this one back in that's number fuse number one let me try a fuse five that's ten app here you go check hope no reading 250 I'm going to pull fuse number nine be right here oh gosh shut the door which we did nope still reading 250 I pull fuse 13c throws it nope that's not it now fuse 25 count these 25 this one right here alright I'll see if this is it yeah that's the one you drop nine point nine where my circuit is drawing current okay that's where is that so I'll show you guys looks like this fuse seven point five amp feeds my instrument cluster feeds my Jim module and my passive anti-theft system module so one of these modules is staying on I don't know which one staying on one of them staying on and causing me of causing me a excessive amp draw you

Channel: AJ Pierce

Views: 285,028

Rating: 4.4262629 out of 5

Keywords: battery drain, parasitic drain, dead battery, parasitic battery drain, p drain test, battery draw test, how to test a battery, ford explorer, ford, how to find a battery drain, why is my battery going dead

Id: tRYgzM3G8N4

Length: 25min 18sec (1518 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 20 2015