Parasitic drain?

I am having an issue with my truck staying charged.

At 1 point I read leaving the lights on and shutting off the truck there would be a draw from I believe the 7 pin connector for the trailer? So now I make sure I do not leave the lights on and felt like the issue went away.

Fast forward to have in my truck worked on where sat for weeks at a time, my battery was getting drained!

Now it seems my battery won't hold a charge and maybe it's from being drained so low but not sure.

Anyway I charge the battery last night where it sat at 12.39 V. I came out this morning and it was at 12.06 V.

I jump started the truck drove it to work jump started it to get home. Once I got home I pulled out my Volt meter again check the battery after sitting for about 10 minutes and it was at 12.42 V. I removed the negative cable and tested for amp draw with everything off. Using the ma I would get max 5.xx ma. I even went as far as putting it on Ambridge opening my door and even then I would only get 1 amp draw.

The seems very low as I read most sit around 25 milliamp up to 100 milliamp. So I'm not sure if I'm reading this wrong or testing in incorrectly.

Any advice would be super helpful!!

Hopefully I captured everything but I am posting from my phone so forgive me.

 

1yr. Red top optima.

There was quite a bit of corrosion on the negative terminal so I cleaned that last night as well.

 

Haha, over the past year... yes!

Radio, back up camera, fog lights, interior lights, replaced trd ecu with Unichip. Almost everything replaced original equipment. I didn't add any additional wiring other than camera that taps into reverse light.

This problem existed when I receive the truck but I thought turning the lights off fixed it (was driving it daily) and now I'm not so sure that it did.

 

Corrosion on the terminal sometimes creeps into the wire braiding and can cause problems. Whats your battery reading with engine running?

 

14.62

 

Drain was occurring prior to new red top battery? And all your work since last year?

 

Yes when the truck arrived in had a dead battery I bought a new battery started working on it since it didn't run. Within 3 days it was dead.

It was so low that I had to take it back to Advance Auto Parts and have them and charge it. If I ran it every day or every other day it would stay charged enough but after having the truck not running consistently for the last 3 weeks while getting work done to it, it was clear that somethings not keeping it charged.

I thought for sure I would see and amp draw once I started probing around but the draw seems so minute that it doesn't make sense.

 

Full charge the battery and unhook it from truck, check volts, check volts again in am and see what you get. Start with simple stuff first. I've chased countless gremlins to find out all my issues were a bad battery.

 

@imDementeD speaking of amp draw, when you installed your radio, did you remove your amp located under the factory radio ?

couple of past parasitic drain threads...

Parasitic drain, solved for the most part

Parasitic drain on battery .13 volts in 24 hrs

 

Simple to trace, un hook ground cable and put a test light in line between cable and post. Start pulling fuses, when the light goes out (it will be lit if you have a draw) that's your circuit with the draw. Start chasing it down.

 

I did remove it, appreciate the threads

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought it's normal to have some draw (between 25 to 100 milliamps).

 

You may know this but unhook meter before opening doors or chances of meter damage can occur.

 

Yes up to .75 amps or less is normal

 

Correct and I should have said so and depending on what you use for a light it might not even light with a normal draw but if you have a drain like the op is describing you'll easily see the difference.

 

Quick update.

I charged the battery last night and took it off around 6pm. It settled to 12.39v by 9pm. Was still 12.39v at 630am. Tested the draw at .45v. Removed the radio fuse as I felt it was the most realistic to cause my problem and dropped to .057v! So I disconnected the radio to see what would happen over the next day or two and oddly 12.39v would not start the truck!

Any way left the radio disconnected and drove about an hr then went to work. Left for lunch, barely started. Leaving lunch barely started.. leaving work did not start!

So I'm home charging it again to see where it gets to. 12.6v is 100% so if it's anything less I'm going to take it back and try to switch it out as I think I have a battery that won't fully charge...

Will update again tomorrow! Charging or vehicle on I'm getting ~14.5v so I feel alternator is doing its job.

 

I bet its battery. Prob a bad cell. I had . Battery issue that would do almost same thing and would test fine.

 

Yup!!

I read somewhere with options batteries that if it won't go over 12.39v its no good.

So I'll try this last time.

 

Those Optima Red Tops sit on the shelves a long time. Asked my Autozoned Manager Guy about what he thought and he ‘never sold one ever’. ‘Optima Company Guy comes in an recharges them on a regular basis’.

Thing that is perplexing about this problem is you said the old battery (when you took possession of truck) was suspect as well.

 

There was Def an issue when I got the truck with drainage which I thought was addressed and maybe it was. (The trd ecu was bad and I read leaving the lights on the on position when you have the 7 pin trailer setup causes drainage)

My current thoughts are, I had a drain that was resolved. I recently upgraded the radio and either that's a new drain or the radio causes higher drain on stand by than normal. This mixed with the multiple drains from previous issue and I have a battery that has potentially failed.

I've used red tops quite a bit without issue and I live in Florida where batteries don't last long!!

I took the charger off tonight and battery was at 12.55v. It's connected to the truck and will report back in the morning!! Radio still disconnected.

 

I have an LED light bar on the front of my land cruiser that had a major draw on my battery. Two days without driving and it was dead. I noticed a really faint glow on two of the LED pods one night when the “light went on” for me. Battery was at least seven years old but the LED was the culprit.

 

So, after hooking my battery back up and disconnecting the radio, the battery stilled drained down to 12.19V. Funny enough, it started the first time during the day, not the later times.

Today, I took the battery in and got a free replacement. The battery was purchased on Mar 22, 2019, so almost a year but it sat on the shelf from 9/2018. The new battery was from 2/20 and was tested prior to leaving showing 1050CCA. The truck started beautifully as you might expect throughout the day and ended the day at 12.73v. I will check it again in the morning.

I still have the radio disconnected as I misunderstood the amperage being pulled originally. With the radio connected, I am pulling .45a or 450 milliamps which are 4x more than it should from what I understand. So, I have the radio pulled out and the main connector removed which dropped the voltage from 400+ mA to 57mA (which falls within the "normal" range).

The plan is to go back over the wiring of the radio but I feel confident the red/yellow/black are connected securely and accurately so not sure why it would pull so much unless that's the "norm" for this android head unit. I bought a 50 pack of new connectors so I can re-do this over the weekend.

I will continue to update as I make progress! I appreciate everyone's help.

 

Voltage this morning sat right at 12.60 volts. I hooked the radio back up and didn't see a change from the radio being plugged in versus unplugged on the meter. My plan is to just check voltage daily for the next few days and see where it sits. I'm not 100% confident in my meter and the mA readings so this will probably be the easiest way.

 

This may have been asked already, please don't take offense but how are you measuring MA or current?
If not already you need to be measuring "in the loop" , meaning disconnecting the battery and putting the meter in the loop.

 

What year is your truck???

 

Yup, disconnecting the negative terminal and putting the black on the battery and red on the wire side. Setting the meter to A and reading .013A which translates to 13mA.

What my concern is, if I put the red on the battery and black on the wire I get -.190 which translates to 190mA.

This is still dramatically down from the .450 (or 450mA) I was receiving (with black on battery and red on the wire, which is how I was doing all my testing before today).

 

2003

 

The difference in measurement may be a conflict with the meter's battery. I would dismiss that reading reversing the leads.

 

My 07 had a similar situation.... I went through about 13 batteries in about a 9 month period. All stock, "new" wrecked in the lot, would die pretty much anywhere... like you stated, walked to the restroom and back and it was dead... I took it in to the stealership about 10 times... got all "new" batteries but they kept dying. It spent 3 weeks in the stealership's parking lot and they supposedly brought some engineers from Texas and Japan with some overnight parts from Japan it would decimate all, LOL joking about the parts, but not the engineers... it appeared that heat was killing the batteries, as well as the Optimas they don't like being stored in either extremes... the last 3 batteries I killed were 2 Optima Red Tops and found out that they limit 2 warranty swaps before they decline swaps and charge you for new ones. Just like the draw started it stopped.... It recently sorta returned, just killed 2 yellow tops within the last 18 months, so I would suggest like above, pull fuses, check your alternator it may be intermittent, possibly may not be charging the battery...