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[Humpy]

Yes as you can see, I'm not watching the wedding!

Went out to the car last night nad the battery was nearly flat. Charged it overnight stuck it on this morning but put a meter on it to see what the current draw was, it was hovering around the 1A mark! Now I would have said that was quite high, anybody know roughly what the current drain should be? Even a bit battery won't put up with an Amp being drawn from it for long.

The worrying thing is me and a mate put a Parrot handsfree kit in last weekend, so I pulled the radio fuse (F12) to see if that was drawing the current and it isn't! So now I'm really stumped. I guess it's a case of pulling all the fuses...

Humpy

[Martian]

All I can suggest is pull the fuses on circuits you know are live with the keys out, and watch the meter for when the current drops.

[Humpy]

And make a note which one went where

Humpy

[Martian]

And make a note which one went where

Humpy

Pull (and replace) them one at a time, no chance of getting it wrong then.

[TheBoy]

try pulling powersounder

[Kevin Wood]

Other common cause is the accessory delay relay sticking "on".

A failed diode pack in the alternator can also do this, but first job, as said, is to pull the fuses one at a time to see if you can narrow it down. Should be about 60-80mA or less IME.

Kevin

[Humpy]

It hasn't got a powersounder, that went some time ago! I'll try the fuses tomorrow and see what I can find out.

Humpy

[Nick W]

All I can suggest is pull the fuses on circuits you know are live with the keys out, and watch the meter for when the current drops.

 If you use something like Sealeys Ta123(Laser do a similar gadget) adapter lead for your meter you can plug directly into the fuse box. Very handy, although I've not actually used mine yet!

[Humpy]

If you use something like Sealeys Ta123(Laser do a similar gadget) adapter lead for your meter you can plug directly into the fuse box. Very handy, although I've not actually used mine yet!

That's just showing off!!! I shall put my trusty 29 year old Fluke on it. The best meter I ever had as it's the only meter I ever had

Humpy

[Humpy]

380mA without the Stereo fuse and with 480mA with it. Still too high I would have thought. It drew 49mA with no fuses plugged in including the underbody fuses removed. Any thoughts?

Humpy

[Martian]

It drew 49mA with no fuses plugged in including the underbody fuses removed. Any thoughts?

Did you remove them one at a time and note the current drop (if any) as I suggested?

[Humpy]

Had a problem with my meter intially so took them all out 1 by 1 with inconclusive results!!! Borrowed a mates meter to prove mine and put the fuses back in one by one. The sunroof, central locking and other expected fuses drew a little bit each all adding up to 380mA, the radio fuse put this up to 480mA.

Humpy

[Martian]

A quiescent current of 100mA for the radio sounds excessively high to me, especially as all it has to do is keep the memory alive.

[Kevin Wood]

A quiescent current of 100mA for the radio sounds excessively high to me, especially as all it has to do is keep the memory alive.

Agreed.

I reckon there's another problem as well, because the 380 that leaves is still high.

One thing we should have mentioned is that you need to leave the car to stand for 5 minutes or so with the doors closed to get the true reading, as the accessory delay relay takes about this long to power down the circuits it feeds (including the lighting in the electric window switches, so it will be significant).

Kevin

[Kevin Wood]

Fuse 7 in the passenger compartment fuse box feeds the accessory delay relay so you can just remove this fuse then you won't have to wait for it to deactivate every time.

Kevin