Parasitic current draw

[ionbeam]

Essentially a disposable DMM.

Edit: I see the HF price has gone up since the linked post was written (four years ago).

 

[Dangerous Dave]

Essentially a disposable DMM.
Edit: I see the HF price has gone up since the linked post was written (four years ago).

Sweet! Good to know I got a decent meter at a decent price. :yahoo:

Thanks Alan!

 

[Dangerous Dave]

Power the XM radio through a switched power source rather than going directly to the battery. That way it will only be able to draw power when the key is on.

I...uh...meant to say that. :blink:

Thanks for fixin' that for me Geez.

 

[Geezer]

Power the XM radio through a switched power source rather than going directly to the battery. That way it will only be able to draw power when the key is on.

I...uh...meant to say that. :blink:

Thanks for fixin' that for me Geez.

Sorry, I thought that you were planning to add a switch. An inline switch would work, but then you'd have to remember to switch it off. That's pretty much what I did with my GPS, and I still forget to switch it off once in a while.

 

[Dangerous Dave]

Sorry, I thought that you were planning to add a switch. An inline switch would work, but then you'd have to remember to switch it off.

I was...but I liked your idea better, so I figured I'd pretend like it was my idea. You don't mind, do you??

That's pretty much what I did with my GPS, and I still forget to switch it off once in a while.

You should hook that up to a switched power source instead, then you wouldn't have to remember to turn it off. No need to thank me...just glad to help.

 

[FJRGuy]

Since no one else has chimed in about similar troubles besides BP, I might as well just plan on taking out the dash panels, getting to the battery with an ammeter, and start unplugging stuff until I find out who the culprit is.

Late to the party (and only made it to post 7 so far.) I've a very similar problem. Sometimes it will be fine after a week, sometimes it's too low to crank in a day. On my second battery in as many years. Measuring for parasitic draws came up empty! :dntknw: Only farkle connected is AutoComm system. I suspect that I have a leak to ground somewhere... and I don't think I'm the only other with this issue.

I'll read on with great interest!

 

[FJRGuy]

Crap! No help for me!

Having EVERY electrogizmo's hot side switched with relay driven by the ignition switch would more than likely make this problem go away.

Not for me!

This is my one real negative for my FJR. I can startup the V-Strom after sitting for months, but not the FeeJeeR. :dribble:

 

[Dangerous Dave]

Since no one else has chimed in about similar troubles besides BP, I might as well just plan on taking out the dash panels, getting to the battery with an ammeter, and start unplugging stuff until I find out who the culprit is.

Late to the party (and only made it to post 7 so far.) I've a very similar problem. Sometimes it will be fine after a week, sometimes it's too low to crank in a day. On my second battery in as many years. Measuring for parasitic draws came up empty! :dntknw: Only farkle connected is AutoComm system. I suspect that I have a leak to ground somewhere... and I don't think I'm the only other with this issue.

I'll read on with great interest!

When I finally sat down to diagnose this today, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. For one thing, I only had to remove one of the four dash pieces, being right side closest to the tank. Couple of bolts and I had the battery negative terminal exposed and accessible. Since I had multiple lugs attached to the negative terminal, I took them all off and put a bolt through them and then put a nut on it, all being separated from the battery negative terminal. This made it really easy to put the ammeter between the battery and the lugs. Then all I had to do was take off the nut and remove one lug at a time until the draw went away. Bada-bing! Seems like it wouldn't be too hard for you to arrange a similar setup and leave it like that for a period of time. You're up in Canadia, surely riding season is drawing to a close for you up there in the great white north. Although in your case, you'd probably want to make sure your connection to the AutoComm was accessible, as well as your stock fuse box for when the problem does reer its ugly head, so you can do some quick checks while the problem is present. And if your AutoComm is wired through a non-factory relay, you might take Geezer's past relay experience to heart as well.

 

[Zorlac]

"Sometimes it will be fine after a week, sometimes it's too low to crank in a day."

When you say "too low to crank", and you've verified that there's no spurious key off loads, if the battery terminal voltage is too low (measured at the battery terminals while trying to crank) to spin the starter, I'd think that the battery is intermittently bad.

 

[charismaticmegafauna]

<snip>... I'd think that the battery is intermittently bad.

You've just uttered the term that is universally despised by auto repair/mc techs -- "intermittents."

 

[Dangerous Dave]

You've just uttered the term that is universally despised by auto repair/mc techs -- "intermittents."

Man...you got that right! Fortunately for me, mine was there all the time.

So I wondered today if my XM power cord was defective, or if it was the nature of the beast to draw some current all the time. It just so happened that I had another one on my workbench at the shop. So I hooked it up to a 12v power supply through an ammeter, with the power cord not plugged into anything at all! Here was the result;

It's even worse than the one on the bike! Get a load (no pun intended) of all the electronics inside that silly cigar lighter plug! Gotta be more goin' on there than just a voltage regulator. I don't know what all that crap is in there for, but it sure draws alot of current even at rest! At 24 milliamps, that's enough to kill a CAR battery in a couple weeks. Crazy.