A QUESTION FOR AUTO MECHANICS! Battery keeps going dead, over time, repeatedly.

there is a bare wire somewhere shorting to ground

Clean yer grounds

Sounds like your negative ground going to your battery might be bad. Check it. Follow it and clean up the connections. Also, try putting a meter to your alternator and see if it's hold volts properly.


Good luck

do any of your car's features not work the way they are supposed to?

brake lights, headlights, tail lights, dome lights?

horn? radio?


my dad's 77 chevy truck was having a problem similar at one point, it turned out that the horn button was in stuck in a "on" position. but the horn itself was non-functioning. i accidentally found the horn relay was engaged all the time but had no idea because the horn under the hood did not work.

i disconnected the relay, and the battery has been fine ever since.

Wear a condom and on a chair outside naked driving lemonade.

Thanks!

Dead short. Could be anything literally.

Everything SEEMS to be normal in that respect.

HOWEVER, tonight when driving it, I noticed the LED clock on the car stereo was blinking back and forth, between full brightness and being dim. (it SEEMED the stereo believed the headlights were turning on and off-wise, electrical circuit-wise)

Wow. I'm an industrial electrician, and I thought dead shorts would cause the entire system to grind to a halt via a circuit opening up because of various protections, fuse, CB etc.

dead short. sometimes, easy to find. others will result in a junked car. other than the battery area start where wires can possibly bend and crease over time.. trunk, hood, doors, glove box. anything with a bulb that swings. wiring harness next. once you have to take the dash off you are getting closer to midnight...

Sounds like a continual parasitic short to ground.

With the car off, remove a battery terminal and connect an ammeter between the battery post and the terminal. If it is reading much at all, you have a short. Pull fuses one at a time and keep checking the amps. When you pull a fuse and the amps drop, you found which circuit is shorting out.

Now trace it down using whatever you can think of.
If you can find the wiring diagram online, it will tell you which terminal connectors exist on that circuit and you can go to each one and test. If the wire goes through a firewall or door hinge, those are common places for insulation to get scraped off.

Search Youtube for your vehicle make and model and year to see if others report a problem and a fix. With a bit of perserverence, you should be able to locate the problem.





Last Edited by JustmeTX on 10/12/2021 11:56 PM

Quit buying after market junk the stock alternators are junk
These days they have less windings and cheap cracked wire
But they less junky than aftermarket.
Alternator and electric motor are what will bring America to her knees. No companies here even wind copper anymore

more than likely its an intermitten rub..scrspe, oxidation, repeat on a few tosty strands. not long enough to trip a fuze.

i would pull the radio out, check all of the wires going to the clock/radio to make sure there was no wire that had been rubbing and finally shorted to ground.

maybe leave the radio/clock disconnected for a few days to see if the problem with the battery continues.

also, look up some questions on a search engine if anyone else on a car forum is having the same problem with your model of car.

maybe find out if a headlight switch or a "dusk sensor" on the dash if you have one can cause similar problems.

How often do you drive it?

That's what us old folks used to call it. Dead short. Not really a fuse blowing short but something is staying on and draining your battery. I'd just pull the negative cable and not worry about it. Mad Max is about to ride anyway.

Place a 12 volt test light between your ground cable and battery terminal, if the light glows you have draw. Pull fuses 1 by 1 until the light goes out. You must have any open door switches tripped so the dome light is not energized. The culprit Fuse will tell you what circuit to look at. Happy hunting.

Alternator??? If this is bad the vehicle will draw power straight from the battery.

Almost never. Once a month or so.
However, the alternator should charge the battery, right?

Brilliant!

Start pulling fuses till it stops...bad seat control? Light in the trunk glove box....bad alt ground if it's doing it that fast....go to auto zone and do a free test

Remember, the clock readout on the stereo INDICATES a voltage drop in the system, it does not prove that the stereo has a short. BUT it is possible of course.

Looks like parasitic draw is the modern day term for it.

Your car may be suffering from CARVID-19

stick a swab into it's tailpipe and put a mixture of unknown chemicals into the fuel tank.

after that does not work, try horse paste in the valve cover

It would not surprise me if I bought two bad alternators.
They both came from NAPA, so who knows.