2003 fx4 level 2 project

[Dirtman]

Did you do a full parasitic draw test?

 

[North Idaho 5.oh]

Did you do a full parasitic draw test?

At the risk of sounding like a moron.... how do you do a parasitic draw test?
Pull each fuse with a bolt meter on the battery till you find the problem?

 

[Dirtman]

At the risk of sounding like a moron.... how do you do a parasitic draw test?
Pull each fuse with a bolt meter on the battery till you find the problem?

Sorta. First test your battery and make sure its not the problem and that it's fully charged.

Open the doors but set the latches closed so the interior light doesn't come on. Disconnect the negative battery cable and hook up your volt meter on the highest DC amp setting from the negative battery terminal to the negative battery cable. You will see the amp draw on the meter. Pull fuses one by one and watch the meter, when the amp draw drops you have found the right fuse. Look to see what circuit that fuse controls and you have narrowed down your problem to something on that circuit.

*you can NOT hit the brake pedal or turn anything on while your doing this or you will blow up your volt meter.

*there will always be some draw, this is from the computers keep alive memory and power door lock reciever so pulling some fuses may cause a tiny drop, ignore those.

This video does a decent job explaining it.

 

[waxclan]

1995 Ranger XLT suffering a parasitic voltage loss for the last couple years so I put my meter between neg terminal and clamp and got 260 mA. Pulling fuses one at a time I found the GEM fuse killed the loss. Following the video

I took the chance and clipped the identified wire and now all is good - no voltage loss over the last 3 days plus dome light goes out with no time delay. While I was there I clipped the radio lighting wire to stop it dimming with the headlights on.

 

[North Idaho 5.oh]

Boy do I feel like a complete moron, but I did find the issue.
The corrosion behind the gage cluster was so bad that something (not sure exactly what) was killing the battery. Replaced the back of the cluster and all is well!

 

[North Idaho 5.oh]

Pulled the truck into the shop where I work and now the fun begins again.
Gonna be doing ball joints, tie rods, wheel bearings, etc....
Rear brakes are all bad and corroded so I’ll be doing rear shoes, hardware and cables too!

 

[North Idaho 5.oh]

More fun stuff.
I put in some “new to me” head lights and I like the way it turned out.
They are cheap china brand but they make the truck look a little more stealth lol

 

[MaicoDoug]

Watch out with those style of headlights, they leak and will fog up and corrode the reflective coating. I had a set when I purchased my 2007 yellow sub fx4L2. You can however add some sealant to the edges where the front & rear halves met. Good luck. I'm doing a front end rebuild also.