Faulty battery or something wrong with car?

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panicky, Apr 21, 6:27pm
Your alternator will not fully charge a calcium battery (which 99% of auto batteries sold today are) from flat.

ginga4lyfe, Apr 21, 6:58pm
do you havr an alarm or immobiliser! did you have a radio recently installed! get ur mate to charge the battery, and pull the fuses outa ur car, leaving only the main ones in ie : Main EFI( PGMFI ) and lights, and see if the car's battery then lasts, if it does, add another fuse ( to its original position and rating ) and see if then the car lasts another few days ( you could speed this up by adding a few at a time, and make note in what happens ) as soon as the car starts losing its battery again you know that maybe the last few fuses have caused the problem and then you can remove them and add others and continue the process, really you will have like 30 fuses and if you manage to find 1 or 2 circuits that are causing the draw, at leased then you can more easily fix the problem

elect70, Apr 21, 7:08pm
Get an ampmeter& put it in series with the + battery lead with key in the ignition but not on & see if there is a draw, should be no more than.05 ampswhich is the ECUmemory , any more then start pulling fuses until it goes . Start with lightingfuses .

pup2, Apr 22, 3:56am
When it doesn't start.look at the dash lights, do they go dull when you try and start the car!Poss that there is a dirty or loose battery connection, or earth connection. Does the car make any noise! Like a click coming from the starter or no noise at all! Poss starter fault maybe. Just thinking outside of the box after the above post. Even voltage drop to the soleniod on the starter will cause starting faults. Or maybe a fault with the ignition swith on the start circuit. Is it an auto! Poss inhib switch. Maybe start relay. With the fault on, a good sparky should track it down pretty quick.

skin1235, Apr 22, 4:04am
I'm picking a knackered alternator, piss poor charging ( diodes cooked on at least one circuit) and draining the battery while engine not running
the sparky should have been able to ID where the 'drain' was happening, you do not report what the charge rate was, in fact you don't mention charge rate at all - so did the sparky even check it

franc123, Apr 22, 4:06am
I'm sure there were problems with ignition switches in Odysseys of that era.I'd be looking a bit harder at that if the battery, charge rate and residual current draw are all OK.It may be a case of when it fails to crank again, bypass the switch with another wire direct from the battery to the starter solenoid feed wire and see what happens.

elect70, Apr 22, 9:33pm
Then get a load test done onthe battery

saki, Apr 22, 9:41pm
you stated the cure in your first post OP just put a new battery in it, problem solved, just having a key in the ignition wont cause the battery to go flat, if the key was somehow completing the circuit there is a fair chance it would be hot.

henderson_guy, Apr 22, 9:55pm
Be aware that if you have a dud bettery in there for too long, it can cause your alternator to fail prematurely. So it would pay to get it sorted sooner, rather than later. I agree with the above, get the battery load tested by either an auto sparky or a battery shop, and also get the charge rate checked.

icemans1, Apr 23, 1:58am
sounds like you need to take it to a different auto sparky, there are bad tradespeople out there.

redslapper, Apr 23, 2:49am
phillip.western, are u around for this lol. Stumped me

richard198, Apr 23, 3:11am
Jeez, this was painful to read! As #13 said; the first thing to do was change the battery.it solved the problem! Throw that battery away and buy a brand new one. It's the heart and soul of your car; never scrimp on your battery.

pdc1, Apr 23, 5:31pm
Yes it has been painful to read, but so is your post. I love people that fix problems by a new battery, which sounds like you. I would get the battery tested again by a different place first. If it tests ok, it is, and you need to fix the problem. By putting a new battery in it that has a larger cacapity (maybe just because it is new) will only temparily fix your problems. It will come back.
Some notes - One it takes alot of driving to charge a flat battery - no 5 minutes nor half an hour. 2- calcium batteries usually require a special charge to bring them right back up. 3- you could have damaged the battery since last test by it going flat 4- you could have damaged you alternator when you changed the battery-hence your problems 5- problem could be dirty battery terminals 6- sounds like you should change your auto sparkie.

motorway, Apr 23, 5:35pm
Honda Oddity.

redslapper, Apr 23, 7:54pm
hey dreamer, are the leads on the battery all tight and clean, if the lead is got white stuff on them, pour water and baking soda on it but make sure those leads are tight as possible to get a good current going.

richard198, Apr 24, 6:00am
If you read OP he says he replaced the battery and the problem went away!
Need I say more!

richard198, Apr 24, 6:03am
I used to install alarns into these and that's what I used to call them!

bigracket, Apr 24, 6:19am
Yip LOAD TEST the battery, I say. Bet its stuffed, yes it charges, but is not holding the charge over time.

pdc1, Apr 24, 7:57pm
You need to read it again. This is not what was said, and further, it was stated that a auto electrician had said they were sure the battery was ok.
All my comment is, is correctly diagnose rather than replace willy nilly till the problem goes away.

therafter1, Apr 24, 8:31pm
Load tests on battery's isn't the be all to end all. We had a vehicle (Holden Adventra) on which the battery kept failing to start the vehicle after it was left sitting, the battery was rated at 530 odd CCA from memory and even when the vehicle would not start that battery was giving a load test reading in the region of the battery's CCA rating and was also showing that it supposedly had 13 or so volts in it, but the problem persisted. To eliminate the battery as being the source of the problem regardless of the readings that we were getting from it we replaced the battery . problem solved.

crzyhrse, Apr 24, 9:19pm
I have to say that sounds like more of a case of a poor battery connection. A load test simply mimics in-service demand. If it was still delivering a good current without the voltage dropping too low (which shows a low internal resistance), it was doing the job required by the starter.

crzyhrse, Apr 25, 12:32am
So an auto electrician who didn't check the earth strap! What are they teaching them these days and why did he say the battery was being drained if it was an earth problem!

I think you've not seen the last of this problem.

johnf_456, Apr 25, 1:54am
+1 I'm not an auto sparky but even I know to check the earths properly before going further.

jason18, Apr 25, 1:55am
Well are we all missing the point that you had no problems when you had a newer battery in but you took it out and put this battery in and now you are having problems.Seems to me battery is poked. If it was fine on your new battery but not with this one then it seems obvious to me that battery is dead.

jason18, Apr 25, 1:58am
But who said the auto sparky was right! They make mistakes and if it was running fine up until he changed battery it seems totally obvious