Have I fixed my current drain problem?

[DartyBistard]

Bit of an odd one this so here goes. Clio 172 battery was going flat after a couple of days non-use, after performing a draw test I was seeing 83mA drain and suspected the after market head unit was the problem.

Pulled the fuse for the radio and put it back in, at which point the drain went right down to 12-14mA. I'm a little stumped as to why the drain went down so much after the fuse was plugged back in and if I've actually fixed my parasitic draw. I left the battery hooked up for a couple of hours, took a voltage reading and it was reading a healthy 12.4 volts, so it seems like the problem has been solved.

Given the car is a track/ weekend project I'm probably going to pull the head unit out anyway to remove doubt. But does anyone have an explanation as to what might have been causing the drain and why pulling and re-plugging a fuse might make it go away?

Worth mentioning I also cleaned the contacts on the terminals, but this was done before the initial 83mA reading.

Any ideas welcome!

[milkround]

When you pulled the fuse did you have to put a radio code in after?

I'm willing to bet its just reset itself and whatever was causing the drain has gone away. It might come back and it might not.

[DartyBistard]

No radio code was required, to be honest I don't think it's that good a head unit. It certainly seemed to reset thought, which made think along similar lines. Given the bloody thing is as good as useless anyway it looks like it'll be getting pulled.

[pcn1]

I had a similar problem some years ago on my Audi cab.
Turned out to be a doggy electric ariel. Un-plugged power lead it and left it in the up postion, battery drain went away.

[Penelope Stopit]

Nice find, it will come back as sure as Jesus did

[E-bmw]

BTW 12.4 volts isn't brilliant, the battery could also be suspect if it has been flattened by the current drain previously.

A good battery should measure 12.6v every 0.1 v below that is a loss of around 25%, so yours is only 50% charged.

[DartyBistard]

Thanks for the responses. Battery was replaced when I initially thought that was the issue, the new battery did then run flat due to the parasitic draw so it sounds like a load test is in order. Don't want to make a habit of chewing through batteries!

[E-bmw]

Get it fully charged & drop tested, that will tell you if it is OK.

[Arnold Cunningham]

This! I've been tracing a parasitic draw on one of my cars and 12.4 is defo on the low side. I have it back on charge if it's that low.
The voltage variance between fully charged and flat as a pancake isn't much!

E-bmw said:

BTW 12.4 volts isn't brilliant, the battery could also be suspect if it has been flattened by the current drain previously.

A good battery should measure 12.6v every 0.1 v below that is a loss of around 25%, so yours is only 50% charged.

Edited by Arnold Cunningham on Thursday 13th February 15:52