2016 Volvo parasitic drain

A battery nearing EOL which can be much shorter than people think with some vehicles will drain down sometimes in a very short period. A 10mA drain is not pulling a good battery down in a few days or a week.
10mA seems low for that car I would expect 60-100mA. I would expect them to arm the anti theft system, to do this they would probably have to feed the test leads to outside as it wont arm with the hood open.

Some cars that are not going to be driven should have the doors locked with the key not the remote so the system does not arm, it can draw quite a bit of current armed and idle. Just some thoughts.
Dealer called this morning and said that Volvo USA wants them to:

1. replace the siren module
2. Install new battery due to low battery

This is the second module replacement: The first one was last spring with the climate control module that was a $1,000 -- paid by warranty.

The service department said that Volvo USA probably sees these problems a lot more then their shop and probably knows best. They have to order the part.

Imagine me sitting here thinking that buying a low mileage car was a good idea and now sit here wondering what the future will hold for the maintenance on this car.
 
No surprises there. Keeping the battery terminals clean is very important on cars like this that have a lot of modules, much less than full voltage tends to make them go a bit crazy and sometimes kills them.
 
After a week of them prodding and probing today they installed the new siren module and the new battery. We will see.

But now I have a rattle in the trim. I have no idea what was dismantled and put back together before they decided on the siren module. It sounds like there is a bolt or socket that rolls at times. Errrr! There is a reason I do my own work! Before I take it to those ham handed people I'll turn the radio up loud and not listen to it!!!
 
Is this your first Volvo? I quite enjoy the ones I’ve had and recently considered getting a v60 a couple of years older than yours. I’m a big Volvo fan. However, even the gen 1 s60 variants had... trying to remember, 23 computerized modules on the vehicle bus, and they all talk and listen and require same-version code installed. It was worth it to buy the Volvo-coded obd2 device because it could dig a little deeper when trying to work on it. But I’ll say this, these cars are highly picky, and if the dealer doesn’t have a guy that speaks CAN, they could have a hard time.

my daughters recently lost the steering wheel buttons. Yes, the dealer charged a good sum of money. However, it would have been far more of my time had I tried to find that particular issue. The dealer tech not only got it right, but he also emailed me a cel phone video of his observations and diagnostics, so I could see him demonstrate the issue. it helped to have a good dealer, but I also denied several other service opportunities due to very high priced parts.

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Is this your first Volvo? I quite enjoy the ones I’ve had and recently considered getting a v60 a couple of years older than yours. I’m a big Volvo fan. However, even the gen 1 s60 variants had... trying to remember, 23 computerized modules on the vehicle bus, and they all talk and listen and require same-version code installed. It was worth it to buy the Volvo-coded obd2 device because it could dig a little deeper when trying to work on it. But I’ll say this, these cars are highly picky, and if the dealer doesn’t have a guy that speaks CAN, they could have a hard time.

my daughters recently lost the steering wheel buttons. Yes, the dealer charged a good sum of money. However, it would have been far more of my time had I tried to find that particular issue. The dealer tech not only got it right, but he also emailed me a cel phone video of his observations and diagnostics, so I could see him demonstrate the issue. it helped to have a good dealer, but I also denied several other service opportunities due to very high priced parts.

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This is my 4th Volvo in my life and the third recent purchase. My first was a 1964 P544 I purchased in the 1969. The remaining three were withing the past 7 years. The 2002 S60 AWD was an excellent car and when we sold that car it had 225,000 on it and was probably 9.5 out of 10 perfect. No smoking out the tailpipe, everything worked, leather was great, etc. We sold it to get our Honda CRV (more cargo space).

The 2007 V50 was another excellent car but had a few more electrical issues. Nothing big and most of them were solved by me. Sold it with 120,000 miles on it and it was also a 9.5. CD layer was a pick sticky and you had to pull the CD out with tweezers. We never used the player much so no biggie and the buyer was ok with it. Sold that car because it was time for a timing belt and the deal was that I was weening myself from doing car work. I always did everything from changing engines on my Jags to everything in between. So we bought the 2016 V60 and sold the V50 AWD.


I've owned the V60 for almost 1.5 years and put about 10,000 miles on it. The two Volvo's above were not CPO cars and because of that we didn't pay a premium price for them. In the 1.5 years of owning this car, when I look at its file folder, the folder is almost as large as the two previous Volvo's put together. This was a CPO, low mileage purchase, paid a premium because it was a CPO. The cost and most was paid by the warranty is more than all the years we drove the V50 and S60.

Now the question is this - did the recent trip to the dealer fix my low battery light? Time will tell. The weather has gotten warmer than normal and nights are in the 35F area. So it hasn't been very cold at night, not enough to stress the battery at the first morning start. Cold front is coming in and that will be when I'll know. Well maybe not because they did put a brand new battery in the car so that will hold a charge longer than an older battery.

From research I don't think they found the real problem and I am not sure there is a fix for whatever the real problem is in the cars. I think there are so many electric modules that stay awake at night and the battery might be undersized. We passed on the Volvo's that have the feature where the engine shuts down at traffic lights. That car has two car batteries. You can shut off the option but from what I read the option shut off is just one more electric component to go bad.

Modern cars and electronics are an issue.
 
Ok so you’re pretty experienced with them. A couple of my s60s had the coveted “after blow” feature that would run the interior fan on hot days to dry out the AC coil. it tested battery voltage to prevent draining a weak battery, but i was still surprised they did it. Loved the feature once I figured out it wasn’t a flaw. they weren’t afraid to use that battery. On a super hot day, the radiator fan might run for 5 minutes, and then later the ac fan for another 5. Really, neither would mean a hill of beans to a healthy battery, but it was surprising when it happened.

you can always meter it yourself if you’re creative and keep an eye on it for a couple of hours after shutting it off. they do some self-tests for a few minutes after shutting off and then go to sleep. I think they’re all done well within 20 minutes. The tests aren’t always the same, for instance every 6 cycles I think they pull a vacuum to test the evap plumbing. I think I’d want to see less than 30ma and probably 10ma or less once it all went to sleep. I’ve never tested on volvos, but I think the chrysler I tested this for would bounce around mostly in the proximity of 120ma unless it was running the vacuum test pump which pulled an amp or so.

if it’s a real drain problem, it will show up before long with a fresh battery. However, if the battery you had was low on capacity, it could have just been that. I’ve had batteries that could start a car like new, but couldn’t store much at all. That kind of pattern would make this situation present.

thinking... always check the silly stuff. Vanity mirror, glovebox, trunk, center console, storage cubby lamps. Also, there is a cooling fan on some located in the ECU box. In the s60s, it ducts from the passenger firewall to bring interior air into the box under the hood. it doesn’t run all the time, but I’d check to see if it’s staying on. Just this Saturday, a buddy of mine tracked the same issue to a trunk light in a sedan which wasn’t turning off. Someone had to volunteer to climb in the trunk...
 
dealer just wants to hand the car to the lowest end tech who puts it on the trickle charger and that makes everything well for X amount of months. Then when my warranty is out they can sell me on their $300 batter install.
I used to do refurbishing at Dell. When I got a computer I would enter it's ID and see it's entire service record from day 1. I saw a lot of them telling the owner to do this and that until the warranty was up. I did notice that when the owner reported smelling smoke that they were told to immediately return it for exchange.

My wife's 2013 Cmax Hybrid had a parasitic battery drain. Left it at the dealers service many many times until the problem was solved. Since then I herd that a bad Hybrid battery will drain the 12 volt battery that starts the engine.
 
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CPO is meaningless and worthless unless it includes some sort of iron clad warranty, the low man on the pole gets the job and they sweep it under the rug. No way are they paying an "A" mechanic to do this sort of work, the bugger goes out for a smoke then checks all the boxes, next.
Ask me how I know.
Yup, and dealers aren't paid full labor costs when doing warranty work.
 
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