JHZR2
Staff member
My 1998 Chevrolet S 10 is more or less like new. It has 62,000 miles and has really needed nothing besides one steel heat shield wrapper (big hose clamp) for the muffler. It doesn't get a lot of use and so it sits quite a bit. Over the last six months or so I've been keeping the battery on a float charger. Despite this, when disconnected the battery seems to drop voltage quite a bit one sitting. Generally when sitting without the charger attached, it would sit around 12.3-12.4V, which is too low.
I finally got around to diagnosing it a little bit tonight and found that the draw on the battery is quite high. The draw is around 0.24 A. I found 0.128 A of draw on interior fuse eight which is labeled as courtesy lamps. Isolating that circuit took the draw on the 50 amp main underhood fuse down to 0.013 A which seems acceptable given that it feeds all of the interior operations. The issue is that I still seem to have about 0.111 A of load even when the entire interior 50 amp fuse is disconnected.
I'm not really familiar with what typical draw is on highly electric vehicles; my 1991 BMW draws about 0.035 A, and my Mercedes draw next to nothing. I've not run load tests on any newer cars that have many more electric control modules.
So, what should the static load on a late model S-10 turned off be? I assume that 0.1 A is too high for typical constant load when turned off. Are there any typical places where short-circuits or draw typically occur on S-10 models? I pulled most of the fuses that were under hood and was not able to isolate the rest of the draw. It started raining so I didn't get to all, but the rest were things like o2 sensor heaters and the horn - stuff that works.
So any recommendations what/how to attack next?
Also the interior fuse 8, any thoughts on that? All lights work, but when I connect it, I hear a relay click that I don't know what it does. Would a stuck on relay in and of itself cause a draw?
Thanks!
I finally got around to diagnosing it a little bit tonight and found that the draw on the battery is quite high. The draw is around 0.24 A. I found 0.128 A of draw on interior fuse eight which is labeled as courtesy lamps. Isolating that circuit took the draw on the 50 amp main underhood fuse down to 0.013 A which seems acceptable given that it feeds all of the interior operations. The issue is that I still seem to have about 0.111 A of load even when the entire interior 50 amp fuse is disconnected.
I'm not really familiar with what typical draw is on highly electric vehicles; my 1991 BMW draws about 0.035 A, and my Mercedes draw next to nothing. I've not run load tests on any newer cars that have many more electric control modules.
So, what should the static load on a late model S-10 turned off be? I assume that 0.1 A is too high for typical constant load when turned off. Are there any typical places where short-circuits or draw typically occur on S-10 models? I pulled most of the fuses that were under hood and was not able to isolate the rest of the draw. It started raining so I didn't get to all, but the rest were things like o2 sensor heaters and the horn - stuff that works.
So any recommendations what/how to attack next?
Also the interior fuse 8, any thoughts on that? All lights work, but when I connect it, I hear a relay click that I don't know what it does. Would a stuck on relay in and of itself cause a draw?
Thanks!
