Battery Drain - Usual Suspects
We have a new-to-us 2010 Four Winds Freedom Elite 31r Just replaced the two 12v coach batteries (probably OEM). The Bosch engine battery was new in 4/13. It will not hold a charge if allowed to sit 4...
Forum Discussion
It is quite possible to check out the parasitic current draw with just an ordinary multimeter. I just checked my daughter's car. I disconnected one battery cable and connected the meter on the ten amp range between cable and battery terminal. The reconnect must have booted up the computer because there was over half an amp initially. I shorted out the meter with a clip lead to avoid doing that again, then switched it over to the 1 amp range. The current soon dropped to 50 mA - pretty good, I think. It is a low end vehicle with no remote. Had it been higher, I would have opened the fuse box and pulled some fuses to see which was drawing the current (avoiding the computer's fuse because my meter will blow a current range if the range is exceeded). I lost a couple of current ranges on a meter while checking a friend's car - it had a hood light with a loose wire and drew a couple of amps when she leaned on the car and jiggled it.
Say you have a 100 amp-hr battery. It will fall to 50% in 100 hours if the loss is half an amp, 200 hrs for 250 mA. I would look into it seriously if the parasitic drain was 250 mA or more. At that level of current a DC clamp meter is sensitive enough to track down the current in a wire without disconnecting anything.
I leave the motorhome battery disconnected when we aren't using it. I just leave one cable connector slightly loose so I can easily slip it off or on the post. I do tighten it for driving. Parasitic draw is also 50 ma.
Say you have a 100 amp-hr battery. It will fall to 50% in 100 hours if the loss is half an amp, 200 hrs for 250 mA. I would look into it seriously if the parasitic drain was 250 mA or more. At that level of current a DC clamp meter is sensitive enough to track down the current in a wire without disconnecting anything.
I leave the motorhome battery disconnected when we aren't using it. I just leave one cable connector slightly loose so I can easily slip it off or on the post. I do tighten it for driving. Parasitic draw is also 50 ma.
