Battery draining

[zylo]

I just picked up a used 2000 ranger a few days ago and the battery has drained while sitting twice. Note that I've driven it a dozen times, so this is intermittant. The alternator output is good.

I've found that there is current in fuses 26 & 29 when the truck is off and the doors are closed (yes, verified that the door switches are OK).
Fuse 29 goes to the radio.
Fuse 26 goes to:
Instrument cluster
passive anti-theft
general electronic/central timer module
Battery saver relay

These fuses are supposed to be always hot.

Any ideas?

 

[VE6WTF]

My old ranger had the same problem..
I thought it was the battery so I replaced it..still no dice.

So one night when I disconnected the battery charger I felt a shock when I touched the door..

It had been raining out so I figured it was just static discharge or something.
I touched it again. and it shocked me..


Turns out there were a couple wires that had been obviosly replaced by some asshole that thought it was okay to just run them along the bottom of the truck and use electrical tape to secure them...

The electrical tape had come undone and the wire became frayed..



So in short.... there is a short in the wire somewhere.


That would cause your fuses and wires to heat up.

 

[dirtsquirt]

I just picked up a used 2000 ranger a few days ago and the battery has drained while sitting twice. Note that I've driven it a dozen times, so this is intermittant. The alternator output is good.

I've found that there is current in fuses 26 & 29 when the truck is off and the doors are closed (yes, verified that the door switches are OK).
Fuse 29 goes to the radio.
Fuse 26 goes to:
Instrument cluster
passive anti-theft
general electronic/central timer module
Battery saver relay

These fuses are supposed to be always hot.

Any ideas?

could be a bad cell in the battery, disconnect the battery from the truck and leave it over night, check it with a volt meter after u disconnect it, and check it in the morning to see if it has changed,

if all is good then started running wires

 

[mossyoak03]

do you have anything wired to your battery besides the positive and negative cables?

 

[zylo]

Fuse 26 was pulling about 200 mA.
But I figure this is OK because all of these loads get disconnected in 40 minutes by the battery saver relay.

Fuse 29 goes to the radio, and was pulling about 600 mA, and never stopped. So I pulled the fuse and the battery has been fine.

I suspect that portions of the radio are staying on because there is a button stuck.

 

[Earl43P]

Yep, I'm sure that 600mA from Fuse 29 was killing the battery.

You seem to know your way around the multimeter!

Welcome to TRS.


Let me know if you need any schematics for that 2000 (PM me your e-mail address).

 

[zylo]

I should know a multimeter...
BS in electrical engineering with over 20 years experience in electrical testing in a production environment.

What was confusing me was the battery saver relay. I've never ran into that before.

Thanks for the schematic offer, but I found them at:
http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?authtype=url,uid
(Use library as the user ID and the password)