Austarion

Hi guys,

Just wanting to see if anyone has any ideas on this before I take the lug off to the auto eletrician next week, if I can cheaply fix this then I'll do it myself (as long as its not going to be too much of a pain).

Heres the scenario. The starion's battery was on its way out, so I replaced it with a new one. Then carelessly someone who was working on the car left the door open overnight. Came back in the morning, noticed that the door was ajar slightly (the drivers door has issues closing completely cause of a prang someone had in the car at some stage - a previous owner) and opened it up. I realised as I opened the door, that the interior lights were off, the door lights were off as was the clock. There was absolutely no power in the car, and the battery was less than a week old.

Checked the clamps on the terminals, seemed to be firmly secured and in place. Jump started the car, seemed to be alright, sat the car idling for 5-10 minutes, turned the car off and restarted and she was fine.

Came back the next day, same thing, car totally dead, no power going to the electrics. I'm quite confused at this stage.

Anyway, that was about 3 months ago. I have since had a rego check done, and while the guy down there was checking out another problem for me, I got him to charge my battery for me cause it was dead again. He noted that the clamps and the main cables were a bit ratty and I should probably look at getting the ends chopped off and getting replacement ones stuck on by a good auto-elec as that could have been the cause of my power problems.

I decided I'd look into it later, as I was about to take the old girl on a road trip up the coast with some mates. Drove up the coast stayed there for a week and drove back with no complaints from the cars battery issue. Got back, car sat idle for about a week doing nothing while i was moving to the city. Came back the weekend after and again, no power on the car. 2 weeks after a full recharge, and one week of sitting there. I know that batteries loose charge when they are idle, but a week...thats ridiculous.

Any ideas what could be causing this problem? I checked the voltage at the terminals when the car is running, and its 13.3V so the charging system is working properly. Could this all be due to dodgy clamps on the terminals and the wires running off the clamps?

Any more ideas where to start looking for a problem?

even though u did say its charging properly just make sure ur alternator belt is tight!

it sounds stupid, there should be nothing wrong unless you have electrical issues which you would know about when you were driving your car.

What you should do is turn the car off, with nothing running not even the door lights and take an amp reading off the battery circuit, take a multimeter an set it to 10A and place it in series (so the car terminal goes to the + side of the meter and have the negative side of the meter touch where that terminal would normally sit on the battery) If you get a reading of above 0.3A or so something is drawing current, if there is no current being drawn, your battery is stuffed.

Yeah thats the plan. I'll probably do that tommorrow.

StazBaby is correct.

One other point though, mine charges at 14.4V. But yours sounds like its charging properly anyway, just not holding its charge. I've had the same problem on a few cars, particularly ones that get worked on a lot (so battery sits flat occasionally).

What I asked my mechanic to do on my car now, is when its not in use, to unclip the red fusible link off the positive battery terminal.

Hey. Didn't have time to chuck the multimeter over the battery, but I noticed something today when i went out to play with the car for 5 minutes. Turn over the car and keep the key held in, and nothing happens, but wait about 5 seconds and the starter kicks in and the car starts.

Could this be that my clamps onto the battery terminals are so bad they are having trouble pushing the current through from the battery to the starter?

I'll get out there with the multimeter hopefully after work tommorrow and determine if there is any excessive load there.

No your clamps would either work or they wouldn't. I noticed that with my last staz, on the first try you will hear a click, then give it ten seconds and it will turnover and start on the second try... When the battery was nearly dead.

Ok update on the battery situation :P Need some opinions on the current draw issue that I found.

Threw a multimeter across the battery after we bought a new one (dad stuffed the old one) and got a reading of 0.13A with nothing on (car off, doors closed) which seemed a little high to me. Went through the process of pulling the fuses one at a time to find out where the problem was (checked on one of my other cars and the same situation gave a 0.03A - on the echo - so something was up). Combination of pulling the wiper fuse and the radio fuse dropped the power down to 0.01-0.03A which seemed much better. The main draw seemed to be the radio fuse dropping the load by about 0.06 or 0.07A.

The only things attached to this circuit is the turbo timer and the radio. I disconnected the radio from the power and it didnt make a difference. It seems a bit unusual for a turbo timer to be drawing 0.06A on its "12V always on line"

The wiper circuit I am not so sure about. I have a feelign this 0.02 - 0.03 draw here must be related to the problem where occasionally when I turn the car over the wipers go off on their own. Any ideas on this problem?

So, is the draw from the turbo timer too high? I think it is.
Any ideas on why the wipers are drawing this much current when they are turned off? I would have assumed they would have been drawing nothing.

Other than that the battery is quite farked, so an Optima deep cycle is going to be put in the car I think.

Some basic calculations. Id expect a car to be able to run a set of headlights on low beam for say 5 hours. I've left cars longer and the lights were still going, but engine wouldn't turn, so I figure thats a good start guess.

If your car drew 0.1A, it would take at least 3 weeks to flatten that battery.

130mA does sound a little higher than Id expect, but the battery should be able to cope with no problems unless you leave it sitting for a month or so on a regular basis.

Yeh thats true spiders web. I was just puting those figures in for a comparison with another car that was available at the time. Is anyone able to do this on their car (do a no load current check) so I can see what sort of values I would be looking at?

I'll get the deep cycle battery and see how that goes, should handle it much better than this.

You wont need an expensive Deep Cycle.

Just get a new battery. Bosch from SuperCheap have a 12 month warranty :) I made use of this when my car sat for 3 months haha, just dont tell them its the cars fault, say it was fine then the battery just crapped out. (if the car is at fault that is, you probably just need a new battery)

DO NOT BUY A BOSCH BATTERY FROM SUPERCHEAP, good grief no.. (sorry spiders) but I've bought one from there, it died and they wouldn't honour there warranty because they kept trying to pin it on my charger so I bought one of their chargers and proved the battery was at fault. They based their theory on the fact my charger leads were hot it was the chargers fault, the heat came from resistance which was most likely from a clogged cell or something else fucked with the battery.

Go to a place that actually manufactures batteries or a maintainence warehouse, you can't go wrong there and even if ya do there not unfamilar with returns from stores so they won't be a bastard to you. I found exide to be great :) bottom line is, stay away from supercheap auto.

Oh ok.

Well I killed mine by myself. I didnt tell them anything, just that it didnt work. I said the car was doing 14.4V, and charging perfectly. They put it on the tester and it said 'Bad Cells'. No problem, get another one off the shelf, here is a new 12 month warranty.

Yea it was more the people I delt with I guess, but I'll still go to people with experience from now on.

Yep I agree.

But there is a lesson in this. If you are dealing with SuperCheap for battery returns, dont tell them ANYTHING, just that you tested your car, it said 14.4V when running, but the battery wont hold its charge.

hehe

And they cant test it, because you couldnt bring your car, because it has no battery now! hehe

Oh and you drove your car daily too btw

They shouldn't be a dick about it, because Bosch pays for it, not them. Also if your battery charger connectors get hot, you do have a crappy charger. It should be limiting the current. Although clearly something was wrong with the battery also for that to happen.