307sw 2004 battery draining?

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:>>> If I leave the + on and take the minus terminal off to add a Amp Meter :>>> to the circuit (one wire from the amp meter to the Earth cable and one :>>> wire to the minus terminal this should tell me what Amps are being used :>>> up and that would be the reason why the battery is draining but the :>>> reading on the Amp Meter is 0.04 which is normal. :>>>

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:>> I may be wrong, I often am, but I thought that the Amp Meter should go :>> between the Poss terminal on the battery and the Poss lead to check the :>> power consumption at any given time, always providing that the Amp Meter :>> will read up to about 50 amps, with the engine switched off of course. :>>

:>> Bryan :>>

: As I said Lenny, it's not often I'm right, seems I'm wrong again. ;-) : :Bryan :

I think some of you can't be reading the posts correctly or I haven't explained it properly (Which is probably more like it!)

It isn't the battery that is faulty. It holds its charge just fine, for ever, when it isn't connected to the car. It only looses the charge when it is connected to both the plus and negative leads. Then it looses the charge in under an hour even though the Amp Meter reading shows normal.

:still not sorted. The charge holder for ever (well for the 24 hours that I :have left it anyway) when the plus terminal is disconnected but only the one :hour at the most when it is connected. I have started to disconnect the plus :everytime I stop. Oh, and the Anti Pollution error has arrived again with a :drastic loss of power and the engine management light staying on. I have a :feeling that this car is never going to be fixed!

If you are certain that the no load drain is only 40mA then this will not drain a good battery overnight. You also didn't say how you checked the battery after leaving it overnight with the leads disconnected. If you simply used a voltmeter and read 12V then you may have been lead astray. You cannot simply use a voltmeter to determine this fact. Even a flat battery which has only 40% of its capacity left will read 12V on a meter but it won't start the vehicle or light many lamps for very long. I would suggest that you fully charge the battery and leave it disconnected overnight and then connect it back up in the morning and then switch the headlights on. If the lamps become dim in a short time then you know your battery is definitely stuffed.

On your Anti-pollution system fault? They can also display a De-pollution system fault - after all it is a diesel.

Read the saga of Sgt. Doofey here

Admittedly his diesel was a later model but the symptoms sound the same as yours. Get them to put a new exhasut pressure sensor in.

Here is a UK saga for a similar model to yours (adi66)

seems his FAP wasn't being dosed with Eolys fluid due to a faulty reed switchon the fuel filler cap. The ECU wasn't able to sense the fuel tank refills anddidn't get to dose the FAP and it clogged up.

:Hi, : :> Should not matter from an electrical perspective, the same current must :flow :> in one lead and out the other. :Yeah. I suppose the "negative lead" mention is due to the risk of big short :if you ever touch the + lead with the body / engine. : :Regards,

Why will it matter if you remove the positive lead from the battery and drop it onto chassis? After all, the lead itself is not live - only the positive battery terminal is live wrt chassis.

:I think some of you can't be reading the posts correctly or I haven't :explained it properly (Which is probably more like it!) : :It isn't the battery that is faulty. It holds its charge just fine, for :ever, when it isn't connected to the car. It only looses the charge when it :is connected to both the plus and negative leads. Then it looses the charge :in under an hour even though the Amp Meter reading shows normal. : :

How, exactly, are you determining that the battery "is just fine"?

I charged it up and then left it unconnected for over 24 hours. I then placed it onto the car and it started without any problems, turning over fast and strong.

If I charge it up fully and then c>

:I charged it up and then left it unconnected for over 24 hours. I then :placed it onto the car and it started without any problems, turning over :fast and strong.

This only proves that the battery is not self discharging due to an internal short. It may retain sufficient charge capacity to start the car once, but this is not a good test. When you re-connect the battery, just switch on the headlights without starting the car. If I am correct the lights will get dim very quickly.

: :If I charge it up fully and then connect it to the car straight away it has :lost all its power within 90 minutes (when I say all its power I mean enough :so that nothing at all comes on the dash board, the car will not start with :a push down hill and there isn't even a spark when shorting the terminals. :That is flat!)

It should make no difference whether you charge the battery and immediately connect it to the car, or charge it, leave it disconnected overnight, and then re-connect it. In both cases, if the battery is stuffed, it will discharge if you just leave the car without trying to start it or anything.

You have to carry out exactly the same test for both cases if you want to observe the true situation regarding discharge.

My bet is that the battery is stuffed.

It sounds to me that the batt is holding charge for you to use it once or maybe twice, then after that nothing,stating batt has had it..try and get a diff batt for a couple of days with it connected.

Lenny. Have you checked your ignition switch it might be in there that is giving you problems . remove it all so you have just got the end of the wire loom. so take it off the barrel might be problem that end one of the little bits inside where the key goes into has moved and crossed and thats draining your batt,(just a guess with out seeing the car and testing diff things)

Top posting is frowned upon but, as you have started, I will continue. The battery may still be defunct. Agreed after being off the car after charging it still turns the engine over, in your words, fast and strong. However, how long would it continue doing that for. One way of proving whether it is the battery or not would be to put it on another vehicle and see how long it lasts. Limiting factor is of course the availability of another car. The alternative, as suggested elsewhere, is to take it to a vehicle electrics specialist for testing, Ten to one they will find one cell is dead.

Hi Keith, I don't know what top posting is.

I bought a new battery yesterday and this morning I have arrived at the car to find it completely dead (The battery that is) So I can say 100% that although the other battery wasn't new it certainly isn't the battery that is the problem. Another wasted £70.

I have a few error codes now too for all the other problems that I am having but have lost faith in all garages and electrical mechanics now.

P1352 P1446 P1445 P1442

Hi,

You'll find a list here :

All these codes begin by P, so they are powertrain-related. As they are P1xxx, they are manufacturer-specific (d'oh !). This means they may not be the right ones, not matching your car (as you'll discover below) or whatever.

P1352 Ignition Coil A - Primary circuit fault.

(I'm in doubt, you have a diesel. May there be a second meaning)

P1446 Evaporative Vac Solenoid Circuit Malfunction

P1445 Purge Flow Sensor circuit Input High.

Secondary Air Injection System Monitor circuit High Voltage.

Give Google a try with something like "OBD code list". These codes are standardized.

Regards,

-- G.T

Thanks for that GT. As you mention I believe that these might mean slightly different things on the 307 106hdi diesel car.

P1446 Additive quantity; additive minimum level wait.

That one would be correct because the additive minimum level error is on. ( I have recently refilled it but not yet had the ECU reset to show that it is now full)

Hi,

Sure, I don't know where there's an ignition coil on these cars :-)

That makes sense. I guess the electronics doesn't allow additive to be injected in the particle filter if the minimum level alert is on - you should go and reset this one soon. Or find a way to reset it (but it may well be trivial, if not impossible without the diagbox).

BTW, I found a better codes list at

which includes the same specific explainations than yours, ifof any help.

Regards,

-- G.T

Try charging it up again and put it back in the car over night again, but this time DISCONNECT the Alternator and see if it goes flat again, if it does NOT go flat then it points to the diode in the alternator. If this is at fault it will be taking the power from your battery and sending it to earth.

GGJ

:> I bought a new battery yesterday and this morning I have arrived at the :> car to find it completely dead (The battery that is) So I can say 100% :> that although the other battery wasn't new it certainly isn't the battery :> that is the problem. Another wasted £70. : : :Try charging it up again and put it back in the car over night again, but :this time DISCONNECT the Alternator and see if it goes flat again, :if it does NOT go flat then it points to the diode in the alternator. If :this is at fault it will be taking the power from your battery and sending :it to earth. : :GGJ :

It was established by the OP early in the saga that the battery drain when the charged battery was connected was in the order of 40mA. If the alternator diodes are faulty then the drain would instantly be much higher when the battery was connected - in the order of many amps. The fact that the new battery drains overnight suggests that the no-load current is not 40mA as the OP says it is, so this in turn begs the question, "is the measuring technique or the interpretation of the meter reading correct?"

To summarise: If the ammeter is connected between chassis and the negative terminal of the battery (and there are no other leads connected to the negative terminal), while the car is sitting there doing nothing, and it genuinely reads 40mA, then the alternator diodes are not faulty. And if this is genuinely the case, then the battery can not drain overnight if it is fully charged and has its nominal rated capacity. For a Pug 307 the battery is nominally a 55Ahr rating which means it will sit there for months before the battery will self discharge to a point where no dashboard lamps will light.

I entirely agree with the above. A good fully charged battery will not be discharged overnight by a 40mA drain, it's simply not possible. A few days ago I asked for confirmation from the OP that his measurement was indeed

40mA. The reason I asked was because the format of his original figure was not one that (say) an auto-ranging DMM provides, and I wondered if there was some mistake. There has not been a specific reply to my question yet....

Julian.

Something very obvious must be being over looked here

I agree, to run a fully charged battery down over night has got to be something with a large power usage, like a headlight, heated rear window, electric window motor, air con fans running. Its not going to anything like radio memory causing it.

GGJ

Hi,

I agree. All of these are visible or audible (fans, lights...) excepted one : remove the bulb(s) used for the trunk lighting. It may be a cause, and it was a common fault with some people : they go fishing, leave the boot opened, and in the evening, when they try to get back home, no power.

HTH,

-- G.T