Tracing a Short
Howdy
Long-time user of the forum and it's been immensely helpful, and this is the first time I've needed to make a post of my own. The issue I have is that my battery will drain over the course of a few hours. Using the ammeter built into my multimeter, I was able to determine that a 2.14mA draw was flowing through the alternator fuse located in the main fuse box in the engine bay. After disconnecting the alternator, the draw still existed. However, when removing the 100A fuse for the alternator, the short went away, presumably meaning that there's a draw somewhere in the alternator circuit. When connecting the fuse back to power, I can hear a relay/clicking noise coming from the glove compartment area. Any idea where the issue could be? Not really sure where to look as I can't find schematics for the alternator circuit. Thanks.
Edit: Upon further critical thinking and investigation, I've determined that yeah, duh, the draw is coming from the alternator; all of the draw from the entire vehicle comes from there. So, I went to sub panel underneath the steering wheel and starting pulling fuses until I saw the ammeter drop from 0.5mA to 0.05. The two fuses that caused the drop were Fuses 2 and 6 of Satellite B; Rear windows and trailer lights. And then I remembered a modification I made to the window ECU per a user on here's recommendation, bridging the top two pins on the connector with a wire or paperclip. Removing this wire/bridging eliminated the draw and fixed my problem, reducing my parasitic draw down to <0.1mA.
Long-time user of the forum and it's been immensely helpful, and this is the first time I've needed to make a post of my own. The issue I have is that my battery will drain over the course of a few hours. Using the ammeter built into my multimeter, I was able to determine that a 2.14mA draw was flowing through the alternator fuse located in the main fuse box in the engine bay. After disconnecting the alternator, the draw still existed. However, when removing the 100A fuse for the alternator, the short went away, presumably meaning that there's a draw somewhere in the alternator circuit. When connecting the fuse back to power, I can hear a relay/clicking noise coming from the glove compartment area. Any idea where the issue could be? Not really sure where to look as I can't find schematics for the alternator circuit. Thanks.
Edit: Upon further critical thinking and investigation, I've determined that yeah, duh, the draw is coming from the alternator; all of the draw from the entire vehicle comes from there. So, I went to sub panel underneath the steering wheel and starting pulling fuses until I saw the ammeter drop from 0.5mA to 0.05. The two fuses that caused the drop were Fuses 2 and 6 of Satellite B; Rear windows and trailer lights. And then I remembered a modification I made to the window ECU per a user on here's recommendation, bridging the top two pins on the connector with a wire or paperclip. Removing this wire/bridging eliminated the draw and fixed my problem, reducing my parasitic draw down to <0.1mA.
Last edited by lohnjouis; Feb 4, 2023 at 04:50 PM.
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Jeff Blake
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Aug 27, 2017 01:44 PM




