Drain on battery

jezz43, Mar 15, 3:29pm
94 mazda astina. 1800 DOHC. car runs well, but has a drain on the battery. has been progressively getting worse. checked battery and had load tested and came back fine, so wondering what if could be. car was parked up for around 24 hours and battery was dead flat. anyone have any ideas what to test next!

sgrants, Mar 15, 3:36pm
That is one of those 10 minutes or 10 hour jobs! ! ! (how long is a piece of string!) Could be any thing from alternator fault to boot light staying on or any thing in between!

intrade, Mar 15, 3:38pm
automotive electrition would need to find what the problem is . high load drains are more easy to find then slow leaking ones. as a slow leak could be a tini short inside a electrical wiring loom deep under the dash. as whereheavy drains usually arefaulty components attachedto the wiring somewhere.

jezz43, Mar 15, 5:29pm
no alarm and all the lights are switching off.
however, theres a problem with the rear lighting loom as ive found, with no lights on the reverse light stays on whilst driving around. also the dash light that indicates something is wrong with a light occassionally turns itself on. could it be a fault in the back that causes the drain!

elect70, Mar 15, 9:49pm
Same thing happened regulary on my disco , found 1 of the door locks wasnt locking ,so presume the actuator was still drawing current . Took panel off & sprayed copius amounts of CRC in it &never done it since .

mantagsi, Jul 25, 11:49am
Faster way to do it, turn car off, take off battery positive or negative, not both, hook up an ammeter in series, set it up so you can watch the display (should be showing a current draw - your problem - with key off and all accessories off). Now one after the other pull fuses out and replace them, and watch the ammeter and when it suddenly drops to 0.00 (or very very close) you have found the fuse that is interupting the faulty circuit. Find out what circuit it is and then go from there to isolate and repair fault. There may be multiple drains, so if your current draw drops a fair bit but still shows a decent pull leave offending fuse out and carry on pulling others. common sense will tell you what circuits are supposed to draw power all the time, and said circuits wont draw much at all in comparison to your problem circuit.