Recharging battery without removing it from car

[M1Accord]

Originally Posted By: Vikas
As I said in some other topic, put a new battery first before doing any more diagnosis. It costs between $50 and $75. Forget what has been told about "tests OK".

- Vikas


If you look at the pics and read the texts, you'll see that the battery is new.

 

[The_Jeff]

This is insane but maybe your ignition switch has some mysterious slop in it. Can you get under the dash, maybe remove some cover, and get at the big electrical connector? Might be worth unplugging that every night for a week.

Reason I smell a connection is you get a "bulb check" when starting the car and that's its own little connection in the switch. There are several contacts within the switch and you could have something that doesn't light up or make noise, but silently sucks power. Could easily have enough slop over the years for this to happen.

 

[chrome]

M1Accord,

Do you have a multimeter? If you do, does it have a terminal that will handle up to 20A measuring current?

You will need to identify where the parasitic drain is coming from. Disconnect the negative terminal from the battery as you have done in the pic, and connect the multimeter in SERIES between the battery negative and the negative terminal. Make sure you are using the high current terminal of your multimeter.

Check the current draw. As others have suggested, 20+ A is very high, as something is consuming up to 400 Watts in your car. It is possibly 20+ mA, which sounds more realistic.

Once you have a readout of the parasitic load, leave the car for 10-20 mins, and recheck if the load is still present. Some ECU goes into sleep mode after 5 mins, which then lowers the load on the battery.

If the load is still there, you will need to start removing fuses from the fuse box one by one, and recheck each time. Once you have identified the fuse which causes the load to drop significantly, you can then narrow down your chase to the identified system.

 

[The_Jeff]

Also consider the hosers at advance had the switch in the wrong position on their battery tester when they tested your amps, eg they had it in volts not amps, and or read the wrong scale on the needle.

A poor mans ammeter would be a marker/glove box light bulb in series with the battery lead; if you draw more than a light bulbs worth of current the bulb will be modestly bright.

 

[Vikas]

Systematically, go through every light switch on the car and try to turn it off / disable it. For example, tape the door switches so that when you open door or trunk or hood etc, the light will NOT go on. After you have verified that opening and closing driver's door will NOT add any drain, connect the 20A ammeter as described earlier and leave it there. There will be initial surge but it should go down within few minutes. Anything over 100mA after a while would indicate that you have electrical drain. At that time, you start taking off a fuse at a time.

Given that you get no-start condition randomly and it also fixes itself, what you have is bad contact in the entire starter food chain and you will need to go through each component systematically. If you have a trusted mechanic, you can hand the car over for 2-3 hours otherwise you need to do this yourself.

I am sure there is enough talent here that if you are serious and have the tools and inclination, you can find this and fix it.

- Vikas

 

[The_Jeff]

Since he's jumping it and getting the battery back up to snuff the starter seems to be working well. Not to be confused with the toyota starters that wear down copper in the solenoids-- stick a penny in to fix, this car seems to be running down the battery with any of the other circuits.