How can I get rid of a parasitic battery drain?
Use your needle-nose pliers or a fuse puller to remove and replace fuses, until you see the Amps on the multimeter drop. Be careful that each fuse goes back into the correct location. If you get through all your underhood fuses, then move into the inside fuse panels.
How to find out if your car battery is parasitic?
How to Find a Parasitic Battery Drain. When your car battery goes dead overnight, usually either the battery is at the end of its life span, or you left something on, such as a light.
Is there such thing as a parasitic battery?
It doesn’t involve parasites in your battery, so that’s a good thing. No need for HazMat suits, yet! A parasitic battery drain is just something that consistently and continually drains your battery. This could be a faulty relay, a headlight/dome-light switch, alternator, or any other electrical gremlins.
How can I find out if my battery is draining?
Replace the fuse and disconnect each lamp, heater, or electrical device one at a time. Flip all of the switches that correspond to the components as well. Watch for the reading on the multimeter to drop to find out which component is causing the drain. For instance, say the offending fuse controls the power antenna as well as the radio.
How to find the cause of parasitic battery drain?
Luckily, you can usually find the cause of a parasitic draw yourself. Start by connecting a digital multimeter to the negative battery terminal of your vehicle. Then, remove the fuses one at a time while watching for changes in the multimeter’s reading.
What’s the parasitic draw on a car battery?
Our subject vehicle has a parasitic draw of 60 milliamps. This is enough to discharge the battery. With our confirmed fault, we head to the interior fuse panel to pinpoint the source of the draw. Set your DVOM to read millivolts. Place the positive and negative test probe on each side of a single fuse.
How to test parasitic draw via Fuse Voltage drop?
This test will show you how to quickly pinpoint the source of the draw using voltage drop across fuses. This method is fast and efficient in comparison to monitoring current and removing fuses. Using this method prevents the vehicle from waking up during the test, causing you to have to start over from sleep mode. Text instructions below video:
How to fix a parasitic drain on a multimeter?
Disconnect the negative battery cable. On the amperage side of the multimeter dial, set it to 20 amps. Disconnect the negative battery cable. Touch a lead to the negative battery cable terminal. Touch the other lead to the negative battery post, completing the circuit within the multimeter, which will display the amp draw.