Battery Drain

2012 NCV3 144 Cargo. Nothing special but I do have aftermarket remote start, alarm and radio. I am trying to isolate the draw draining my battery but I am a bit perplexed by the results. The steady draw of the battery when vehicle is at rest is around .465 Amps. I tried to isolate the draw from each positive lead from the pre-fuse box. I only have posts 3,5,6,7 occupied.
#3 SAM 80 Amp is drawing .153 A
#5 Term30 Fuse Box is drawing .199 A
#6 Bridge .001 No Draw
#7 Passenger Compartment 80/150 No Draw
The large one on the main battery post is also drawing nothing.

Here is where it gets weird, if I check the overall draw from the negative terminal with everything connected, the draw is higher than the total of each individually. I have also tried pulling all the fuses I can get at (F55 1-6), with the exception of Fuse Relay Box SRB #'s1-15 and the none of them seem to affect the overall draw.
At this point, I think my new battery I put in last year is once again pooched. I have to recharge the battery each night. I need to figure out what is drawing close to 1/2 A unless of course this is within a normal range. Any thoughts would be helpful.

I would suspect added or aftermarket loads. Perhaps disconnect/remove local fuses on all added electrics to see if the load drops.

vic

Sounds pretty high to me.
Radio shouldn't draw power when off.
Alarm will definitely be using power.
I assume the remote start is a feature of the alarm.

I wonder if the alarm is wired in a non-obvious way to make it hard to disarm after a break-in.
Maybe check for a direct wire to the battery positive terminal? Or to some other always hot location?

There are tips and tricks to isolating parasitic draw on a modern vehicle.

It’s critical the vehicle systems including the CAN system are in “sleep mode”. Sleep mode Is when all the modules in the vehicle are no longer communicating. This can take several minutes after the key is off and the doors and hood are closed. Even things like GPS, NAVI, SAT radio, Bluetooth phone connections can stay active for several minutes.

When it comes to aftermarket alarms and remote starts.........they are imfamous for keeping the CAN system awake and drawing more power. .465 amps will definitely cause a problem if the vehicle sits unused for 24-36 hours. ( depending on the battery age and condition)

Depending on equipement and even how the vehicle is shut down key off and in full sleep draw should be 25 to 80 ma. ( .025 - .080 amps).

A inductive DC clamp on ammeter is your friend when trying to isolate the draw.

The alarm portion has two modules, one connected to can bus. If I power down the entire alarm by removing fuses connected to the constant power, there is only a slight drop. I will keep hunting and try to locate the remote start equipment. It was professionally installed and I cant find it yet. Can anyone explan about the draws not adding up from the positive power distribution isolation testing points? It seems illogical..

.46 amps is a fairly large parasitic load. ..46 amp over 24 hours is ~11 amp/hours. It is the equivilant of a 5-6 watt light bulb on all the time.

Icarus

I would not get distracted by trying to add up the amp draw at the different circuits.

Find the common ground point at the battery and measure the total amp draw at that point.

im having a similar issue on battery drain, only have aftermarket stereo, alarm, and espar.
I usually only drive it on the weekends, when I try starting it after a week of nothing, it turns over very slowing like the battery is almost dead. The rest of the weekend it's fine.
Should I be connecting the alarm to the house batteries?

Disconnect the radio then try the drain test.
Note there is always a constant feed to the radio.
Dennis

The reason I mentioned the alarm is based on experience of friends a few years back. The alarm was a high end Viper I believe, installed at a custom shop, and caused a similar problem.

I am not an expert like Dennis for sure, but tossing out ideas none the less.

Another wild idea I have is to pull the Sprinter power disconnect and measure the current draw at the battery terminal. The Sprinter disconnect should disconnect all the Sprinter factory systems. If there is anything else still drawing power...

(I hate struggling with battery problems. My ERA was problematic for the first year.)

Thanks for all the feedback. I will try and get back to troubleshooting with the above mentioned and let you know my findings.

After removing the alarm and radio, the draw is now .365. It must be related to one of the fuses at the footwell Fuse Relay Box SRB #'s1-15. These are the only ones that were almost impossible for me to get out.

I found a great link under T1N forum for testing draw directly from a fuse found here https://sprinter-source.com/forum/showpost.php?p=617970&postcount=22

After testing all fuses I found my fuse number 3 which is a 10a described at Terminal 30Z for ignition lock & instrument cluster is drawing 156 mA after vehicle is idle for a couple of hours. My alarm fuse is not part of the main fuse boxes as it was spliced into a main 12v power line, but in any case it is drawing 18mA. There is one more aftermarket device called Idatalink remote starter that I am unsure of where it was wired or how much it is drawing I am pointing my finger in that general direction at this time.

Should I be concerned about the 156 mA on my number 3 fuse?

JonesOnHomes said:

Should I be concerned about the 156 mA on my number 3 fuse?

Click to expand...

Yes ... it's easily three times higher than it should be.

--dick (who would consider 35 milliamps "typical" and anything over 50ma as "too high")

Yes the .156 draw is likely part of the problem.
Ultimately you must get the draw down to 30-80 ma.

Just a troubleshooting point because draw tracing is tricky and confusing.
The key is not in the ignition switch .......right?

I’m also doing a little electrical troubleshooting. Is there an inductive dc ammeter that you recommend? Most that I see have a max amp rating of 200 to 600A so I would imagine that they don’t have any accuracy at the low end, assuming they can even detect in the mA range.

Thanks.

No the key is not in the ignition, however I may have been testing incorrectly. I leave my drivers door open during all of these test and assumed that the light circuit being off is good enough. After watching a troubleshooting video yesterday I discovered that closing the door latch while working with the drivers door open made a difference. If the latch was closed before applying the battery ground to test the draw, the constant draw dropped to 200 mA, a big difference from above the original 450. Now with the door latch closed, my number 3 fuse is drawing about 120 mA. So I am still experiencing an issue, however leaving my door open open every day during my initial troubleshooting was obviously a stupid assumption that it did not draw anything if the lights were off.

Mkkbven said:

I’m also doing a little electrical troubleshooting. Is there an inductive dc ammeter that you recommend? Most that I see have a max amp rating of 200 to 600A so I would imagine that they don’t have any accuracy at the low end, assuming they can even detect in the mA range.

Thanks.

Click to expand...

Most have repeatable accuracy to 10 ma (.010 amps). When troubleshooting your goal is 20-80 ma key off full sleep mode for most vehicles. So if the meter is accurate enough to read 20-80 ma it makes no difference if your draw is in that range. Draw problems usually show up with 150 ma or more. 150 ma might take a few days of no use to run the battery down. Where full 5 amps draw over night might get a no or slow crank. You just need to the meter to get you in the ball park. Some of the high end meters will have a resolution to 1 ma.

JonesOnHomes said:

No the key is not in the ignition, however I may have been testing incorrectly. I leave my drivers door open during all of these test and assumed that the light circuit being off is good enough. After watching a troubleshooting video yesterday I discovered that closing the door latch while working with the drivers door open made a difference. If the latch was closed before applying the battery ground to test the draw, the constant draw dropped to 200 mA, a big difference from above the original 450. Now with the door latch closed, my number 3 fuse is drawing about 120 mA. So I am still experiencing an issue, however leaving my door open open every day during my initial troubleshooting was obviously a stupid assumption that it did not draw anything if the lights were off.

Click to expand...

Yes the door open signal will keep the CAN active.
Hood open on some will also keep the CAN if equiped with switch on the hood latch.
Also how the vehicle is shut down can have effect like radio on or radio off when the key is turned off. This shut down senerio comes up with intermittent draw problems.

I asked about the key in the ignition.........we had cars only going dead when parked in the garage.........turned out customer left keys in the car in their garage. CAN stayed active because it was waiting for the next key command. Same with Bluetooth handsfree links staying active only when the key was turned off during a call in progress.

Mkkbven said:

I’m also doing a little electrical troubleshooting. Is there an inductive dc ammeter that you recommend?

Click to expand...

My choice: http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_03482369000P


400 amps is handy for the combined load of starter and glow plugs.
It reads in the low milliamps (20 or so) reasonably accurately.

$60 list, frequently discounted to near $50.



--dick