Very Weird Parasitic Drain!

are are we actually seeing a parasitic drain I uh I don't think so I think the sun is heating that thing up making it look like it's a drain I got a O2 Dodge Ram here that customer concerns of parasitic drain and um we going to use this little amp clamp this is my favorite little uh amp clamp for parasitic drains because it's it's pretty accurate at low currents so if you don't know what this is this is the UN un uh UT 210- e and I think that's kind of important let me show you here so Unit t ut210e and um it's pretty cool I like this thing it does 2 Amp 20 amp up to 100 amp AC and DC um the only drawback is it always defaults to AC but I've read that there is a way uh and Sean tipping says there's a way to change this to where it defaults to DC by modifying the eom in this thing so one of these days I'll uh modify the eom in this and do a video for you about it but for now you just have to hit the select button to change it over to DC and uh then of course always give it a nice zero and uh to show you guys we've got a current draw let me get under here so we've got battery cables coming off right there and if I just clip this on here you see we're pulling almost an amp about 900 milliamps so that cable runs across to the fuse box and then the fuse box actually splits this cable again here so sorry for the background noise um see we got 800 milliamps there we go over to this other cable we've got nothing so what that tells me is is something in this fuse box is drawing this current so I need to figure that out I'm just going to set that there and I've already went through with my meter here on the molt scale and checked all these fuses I've not checked these yet I had to get a tool to flip those up I went through all of these and none of them show anything so let's just pick one here you're looking for your meter to be zero if I can get my hands to work it's a little chilly this morning so you see how that's zero if I take my leads off see how this is floating around now so if you've got these basically shorted together where there's no current flowing you get 0 molts so we're looking for a fuse that will give a molt reading I went through all of these like I said except for the ones that had the covers um so these three have not checked yet but before I did that I wanted to just see if if the the uh thermal camera would pick anything out so I kind of just went over all these fuses and nothing really stands out except I had that relay kind of standing out but I can't really show you guys too well but I'm pretty sure with the cover off the sun was hitting that relay by itself and heating the top of it up so uh another strike for the thermal camera not being able to find a uh fuse warmed up and it's cold this morning it's uh let's see it is on my watch come on watch 45° this morning so this truck's been sitting out here all night uh it was actually Dead uh they've had a charger on it for a little bit charging the battery back up and we've got current flowing so a fuse should have been glowing a little bit if the uh current draw was big enough to actually heat the fuse apparently whatever is on pulling 800 milliamps is not enough to heat a fuse up to where you can see it with a thermal camera so everybody keeps wanting me to do videos about thermal camera and parasitic drains this is why I don't I it's extremely rare sorry I'm real close to Road plus rout right here at the shop so it's real noisy today sorry about that so I'm back to checking fuses the problem though with the milliamp method is these fuses right here you you can't do them fuses unless you basically break the covers off of every one of them so I'm hoping I can get lucky and it's one of these three uh and we'll see it with the meter here if not we've got to then resort to the old pull it method and we'll watch the amp clamp meter and see uh if we pull these big fuses which one it is is doing it so let's uh get the meter here to where hopefully you can see I can be able to do these checks here so check this fuse oh come on meter and by the way make sure you're in DC this meter defaults to AC so you got to hit the select button to uh change it to DC so keep that in mind if your meter goes to sleep on you like mine just did and you have to reset it you need to turn DC back on and man my fingers can't work today it's so hard to do onehanded so that one zero that one is zero and hey there we go 1.9 so and the negative is just because my leads are backwards from the direction of current flow so if I flip my leads around here you can actually tell which side is the power feed in and which side the power feed is out come on fingers there we go see we're positive now that means where my red lead is that would be the power coming into the fuse and the other side is where it's going out so that's why we have that voltage Dro so what does that fuse feed um we look at our fuse diagram here that is kind of how the fuse box is laid out and it says 51 fuse 51 here and we are cluster radio and underhood lamp well the underhood lamp is not on have not opened the door yet cuz I don't want to wake things up but the cluster is not on or the radio over there know you guys ain't going to see and this thing's been sitting for a while so was a little dirty so let me uh hopefully open the door without waking the truck up too much and then we'll see if the camera can actually see one of those things on of course as soon as I opened the door the truck woke up uh let's see so we're two amps now in the cluster lit up so now that test is not going to be valid using the thermal cam camera because yeah the cluster just heated up some so I got to let this thing sit here go back to sleep and see if uh we'll get back down to that current and maybe maybe this stuff will cool off cuz how cool it is and we'll see something all right so this is back down um one thing about these is if it goes over the current sometimes they don't reset back so you need to take them off rezero them and go back um but yeah so we're back down to 800 milliamps and got the thermal camera turned back on and the cluster doesn't look like it's warm at all and there's the radio you can see the screen is glowing a little bit there so maybe the camera is useful after all I just don't know I'm hoping the sun isn't somehow shining onto that somehow or it's the reflectiveness you know cuz these are real susceptible to Reflections so still not 100% convinced it says it's 75° versus is uh 60s 61 but like I said starting to get sun to shine in then so let me see if I can block out this window and get make sure this is not getting light got lucky and they had some cardboard out of this gasket kit so just got that shoved up over the window uh so now the sun we got a little down here but it's kind of shouldn't be affecting it I don't think anymore so let's see the radio is still lit up but this is what I was worried about though you can see we're not in the light anymore but you can see how the Sun had heated up that section of Dash that's what I was kind of afraid of was happening here but it appears that that radio is uh possibly the culprit here so we're going to get this radio out and unplug it and see if our current draw goes away all right so the radio is out and look at that she is glowing pretty good and you see some parts that are saying 90° so uh yeah finally the thermal camera has come through with a parastic drain finally but we knew kind of where we were going from our fuse checks um I the the point of the camera a lot of people think it's is to see fuses that are glowing you got to have a lot of current draw to really lot the fuse up with the camera but something like this the camera can see it for some reason I don't to me it seems like the little tiny fuse would be able to light up a little easier but it it just won't but in a case like this you know that radio you is clear like you can see inside the dash there is is dark the temperature is down but this thing is heated up real good so without a doubt this radio is what's consuming the power none necessarily means that it is the reason the con power is being consumed like there could be something making this radio consume power but it's not very likely like um I would think you know if it were something like a a dome L wire or something that was you know doing something with the illumination Circuit of the radio um we have more things on but we don't and I kind of think illumination is actually handled by data on this radio I think this radio radio does a lot by data um there's two power wires a ground and I'm pretty sure these are data wires I'm I'm thinking but let's just well before I unplug it let's look at her amp clamp out here so let's uh take it off yeah we're still still pretty zeroed we're going to zero it again just to make sure we put that back on there so 800 okay let's unplug the radio and I'm going to have to sit you guys down cuz I need two hands wow the back of this thing is actually pretty hot yeah I'm kind of surprised it was only pulling that much power cuz oh my battery's dying the back of this thing's even hotter my temperature is not reading correctly but but yeah I can I can actually feel that now let's go ahe here and take our imp clamp there we go 76 74 it's a little high but I mean the amp clamp might be just not able to read that low 60 I mean it's an amp clamp they're they're really not good for tiny tiny amounts of current so um what I might do is actually take the cable loose put my meter in series with it and we'll actually check it with a meter all right so so I've carefully took apart this got my meter in circuit and you can see oh well we're on AC let's put that to DC so 66 look at this that's 60 so this is actually reading pretty accurate let's take it off and we'll zero this again okay and clamp it back on there there now was reading 30 let me turn it off turn this off go back to AC or DC I mean zero uh so actually reading 38 but this is reading 65 I trust this a whole lot better like I said when you get down in a tiny tiny numbers you know amp clamps are iffy in circuit with a meter it's the better way so yeah um 60s a little high still I don't I don't particularly like that so I might go a little further with this thing got out the old vars here um and I've also got diagram pulled up so we can see here on the radio we've got radio right here and we have PCI bus two fuses or fused battery and then a fused ignition switch output and then a panel lamp drivers and then a ground so we need to make sure nothing is on that would basically have this radio on um so I thought it was a data turn on but there's actually a an ignition coming to this radio so we need to check Powers grounds you know data that panel lamp fuse um and things like that so let me uh show you I got the scope just kind of just grounded here because it's nothing critical I'm just checking for things to be there that shouldn't be there and one of these days I might upgrade this thing to some kind of handheld scope or something so on the plug here we can see we got two pink wires and then two black with green strip wires and on the diagram that shows let me get back it's kind of touched stuff it shows that we got two f used pink wires pin one and pin 12 and on this connector not sure if you guys will ever be able to see this or not but there was a 12 right there and a one on this side of it can you see that hopefully and then 22 and 11 so pin one right there that's our power and then pin two is fused ignition switch output and it says all this is coming from instrument cluster so it's kind of weird the diagram is showing the cluster is supplying power to this this thing am I reading this right I think so and then we got the diagnostic port in the PCI bus so this uh I mean we're probably going to have power not too real concerned about power if we didn't have power how could it be on but anyways there we go you can see we're above 12 Vols we still got a charger hooked up that's why we're getting this Ripple so if I unplug this back down to Flat now let's check our other power this whole YouTube stuff is so hard to do onehanded uh there we go power again so let's uh check that data just in case the data was doing something so that's pin 14 and it's a Violet and light blue so 12 13 and 14 Violet and light blue and let's get my probe in here okay and there we go we've got nothing there uh panel lamps I don't think we're going to have any panel lamp voltage cuz none Le lights are on but three let fuse [Music] three and orange with blue and that's what the diagram shows so let's uh see pin three I can make my fingers work come on y'all keep saying I don't need a Caleb but I need a Caleb here we go panel lamps is nothing so we got one more thing that could turn this radio on that's ignition it wasn't on but let's uh check it anyway so we got a uh black with a red strap or a brown with red strap um let's see BR and red so that's probably Brown yeah I guess it's kind of brown it's a dark brown but let's see pin two yeah pin two now that is that's crazy uh we got ignition voltage come on now really I'm I'm pinned in that correct you guys see that let's see got a test slot here that uh let's see if it'll light a test slot this is interesting now yeah it will light a test light let's see will it light more current 2 and 1 12 amps and the voltage didn't drop partly any so that that circuit is on that's not voltage bleeding into the circuit from like um water intrusion or something else that circuit is either hard shorted to power or uh it thinks the key switch is on this is this is nuts how come that's the only thing powered up see the cluster is not on but our diagram shows the cluster is what sends out that power see cluster to fused ignition that's that's nuts [Applause] huh I guess I may be pulling this cluster out that's that's that's a little nuts but this is where the data is taking us so looking at this a little bit closer we can see that our diagram actually shows this splice s212 and this splice s204 I'm thinking these splies are actually being supplied power from the fuse and it's going to both of these things so we need to find this diagram 8 w-10 d44 so so let's go back to my OE diagrams here and power distribution power distribution and we're looking for 44 I think yeah okay right here so from the tip them fuse number two 4 and 1/2 [Applause] amps what kind of fuse is 4 and 1/2 amps what kind of weird what is that is crazy but anyways coming from the tip them there's their splice and there we go radio seat Bel instrument cluster so let's find this number two PT c number two 4 and 1/2 amp why is it not a fuse it's it's not saying it's a fuse what in the world is this it's it's being supplied oh my God I keep pushing buttons dang it all right let me go back down here 50 44 so right here's their ignition switch so it shows that circuit is like coming from back here so two and four position two and four would be sending power to this so ignition two is in run IGN four is accessory well there's definitely no key in here so this shouldn't have power at all but it also connects to fuse 29 so I can actually do a voltage measurement on 29 see if we got power but this is weird this is not a fuse see this fuse PTC number two I don't know I don't know what what that is let's go out here to the tip them and see what's going on I got my metor kind of set up I don't I'm out of I'm using my good leads for the uh current setup here you see we're still it's say 70 milliamps but I got one of my leads just clamped in here with the battery and we're on voltage and fuse 29 it's right here so if I measure that we've definitely got power there on both sides of this fuse have we got an ignition switch issue now this is uh getting a little weird um I guess I need to take apart the column a little bit now golly this it's a weird truck so it says the ignition switch is turned on by my voltage check so I got to get this off we can get to the switch in here and actually check power on uh the hardwire harness all right so under the dash here we got the harness here that goes to the switch but I'm not sure why that would be cut right there that's kind of strange but anyways like it shows that we need this black with a white stripe according to the diagram it's the only black with a white stripe I see and I don't see where the other end of this is either like I don't I don't know what's going on here let me uh let me get a pierce Pro we're going to test this down here I think I'm wondering if this has got a recall some kind of recall done because I've got a green wire that's cut up here too so green and pink and this pink has a black strip on it and we got these two wires that have been ran we got a pink the black stripe I know you guys ain't going to be able to see this too well but there a black stripe on there and we've got some kind of part number Tag I'm thinking this was some kind of recall that they done but anyways um got a pierce Pro on this black with a white strip wire here we'll take the uh varus here and uh get it regr grounded you know always go to the proper ground and get my other lead and we'll go into here and yeah we've got voltage so I want to take I'm not turn the key on I want to take and just stick the key in and wiggle it and see if anything happens over here with our voltage I I'm not wanting to turn the cylinder too much but I want to just you see that what was that oh it's probably not going to do it again let's see if it still killing the buffer look at this this uh Zoom come on come on where is it at zoom out a little bit more did I miss it nope there it is so Zoom back in here we did catch a little bit of something let's see if we can get it again oh I just turned the key but but what I turn the key and it come out I'm I'm zero but what in the world was is was the key like turned back too far look at that the the key is messed up like you can pull the key out in any position so the the key is in an accessory so the radio was on like what what oh my goodness um I got to be careful not blow my meter up out there let me let me go put the battery cable back on this thing correctly and um we're just going to go by the amp clamp meter oh my gosh all right to plug the radio back up and I've got the key back in that position that it was in where it was it's all the way back and pulled out and the display isn't on but the display was on when I first turned it on and if I stick the key back in like it lights up I'm not I'm not really sure what's going on with that is okay so maybe it was just off and the clock goes on off I don't I don't understand it's stand on now I've got the key on by the way so you can crank it I I don't understand why the clock was off I'm in that I'm in that I'm in accessory I believe well no this is is off but I've still got power how's this how does that make sense the radio's got power and ignition it's it's got to be using that PCI wake up all for wake up it's got to be why else would the radio have the PCI bus why does it got an ignition I mean we clearly see it's got we've got power coming out on that wire that's going to that and see I just stuck the key in and that come on now it's back off I I can move the key a little bit and it'll wake it back up but yeah if I if I back the key out just a little bit it goes off I push it in back it out out but like this isn't really changing I don't think no it's not I'm doing the same thing making this go on and off but that voltage is isn't going doing anything different so it make it make sense somebody I'm let's see right now I guess the ignition is on this is off though I mean this is this is strange I don't know where off is on this switch okay that looks off that is off that is off okay let's let this sit for a few minutes let let it go to sleep if anything's awake let's let things go to sleep and we're going to recheck our our amp clamp out there I can't seem to get past 100 milliamps here and uh I can't I don't I'm not I'm not confident with this switch so talked it over with the customer and since this key and switch is just acting real weird like turning the radio on and off just by wiggling this around I'm almost thinking there might be something wrong with the switch the electrical part and the hardware part or the the hard cylinder side and maybe something else is turned on in there so it's either go forward with more testing and more testing or replace the bad part that we know is bad um and then re-evaluate so talking it over with him that's what we're going to do he's going to get a new cylinder a new electrical switch um and then we will retest after that so um I don't know if there'll be any more to this video or not or to this truck um we'll see how it goes but that's where we're going to leave it for now so thanks for watching everybody and uh we'll see you guys later

Channel: Automotive Diagnostics & Programming

Views: 10,221

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Id: SuWum-I1-pM

Length: 37min 31sec (2251 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 22 2023