My 98 park av has a constant draw on the battery. despite my 24 years as an auto tech, i am unable to isolate the source of the draw. has any one had a similar problem or have any tips on how to find this gremlin? HELP!!!!
Remove fuses and unplug plugs until you find it.
All batteries in cars have a constant draw for keep alive stuff like clock memory, ECU, and radio pre-sets. If the draw is like 60~100 mah, it's perfectly normal. Start locating an excessive draw by disconnecting the power feed from the alternator. If a big draw (> 1AH) stops then, it's almost certainly an alternator diode. If the draw doesn't stop then, it's time to start pulling fuses (meter attached) until the offending circuit is located.
It'd help us if we knew how fast the draw is--either in ah/mah's or in hours or days to draw it down to a no-start condition. Also a bit of info on how strong the batt is on a load-test. Also, is it always or intermittent? Recently helped a guy locate his intermittent leak only after he told me how quickly it ran him into a no-start condition and that the batt would be completely down(flat?)after one overnite-sit when the intermittent leak hit. Was the passenger power-seat button that would occasionally stick in one position, and those circuits are always-hot no matter the key-position. A tad more info, please. s
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