2002 Hyundai battery draw

[cassidy]

The battery in my moms 02 Hyundai xg350 keeps going dead overnight. She took it to Autozone and they replaced the battery and it still goes dead. Im a truck technician and I'm good at troubleshooting electrical systems on those but I dont know a lot about cars. I checked the parasitic draw on the battery and it has .44 amps drawing on the battery. What is the normal draw for a car, in the truck world this would be ok but they have 4 batteries. I pulled one fuse at a time and when the instrument cluster fuse was pulled the draw went to .009 amp. Is it possible that the cluster is draining the battery?

 

[SHOZ]

Generally .05A is the normal off current draw.

http://www.hmaservice.com/ has the wire diagrams. You must register but it is free. Have to use IE though.

 

[willix]

Sometimes new batteries are bad. Is the trunk light on?

 

[fsskier]

These can take a while... let me note of a couple of oddities that can lead you down the wrong path:

When measuring the "parasitic draw"of a late model GM car lately I found that the current draw was:

About 1.8 amps for about 20 seconds after the series meter was connected. Remember the power in the car was completely off when you connect that, as you have the battery cables off.

Anyway: 1.8 amps for 20 seconds: Something maybe the computer booting, or on standby Who knows?

.750 amps for the next minute - something waiting of a command?

.050 amps thereafter.

Eventually I found her underhood light assembly had fallen off and had on days and off days!

Note that you battery should be able to run a .44 amp load for a couple of days and still start the car.... but that much load is still not right. We expect to go to the airport, leave the car for 2 weeks at 10 below zero, then still start when we get home!

Anybody know where these "startup currents" are going??

 

[Y_K]

On a Police Interceptor 50 mA with spikes up to 80 mA. That is with the doors locked, equipment off. So, Hyunday with the weaker baseline battery can not possibly be over 30 mA.
You could rent a Mitchell 1 online daily, weekly, annually.

 

[cassidy]

^^^^^ thas what it did, but it settled at .44a. No other circuts are on. If there was another draw the amp draw wouldnt have dropped to .009 amp when the cluster fuse was pulled. Anybody ever heard of a inst cluster drawing too much while in sleep mode? I will test the battery, but I dont think its the problem.

 

[mechtech2]

Put an ammeter in series with a battery cable to the battery.
Then start yanking fuses to see where the problem lies.
It's a good start.

 

[cassidy]

^^^ ahhh, thats exactly what I did.

 

[Scott_Tucker]

There may be more on that circuit than just the cluster. You will need to consult a wiring diagram.

 

[cassidy]

Yeah, Im going to get ahold of one sometime this week.