Car Battery Drain

[GTXMike]

I recently developed a problem with draining battery. I grabbed my multi-meter and checked the readings. It drains 180-200mA with everything off and then drops to 10mA when i take out the 5A fuse relating to Central Locking. Without that fuse the doors won't lock and the car wont start. The ignition comes on but nothing happens when i turn the key. The drain also dropped when i pulled out a 60A fuse from the engine bay fuse box, the fuse have a red housing and its located on the top right hand side of the fuse box. Any suggestions?

 

[da rok]

Well if it stops draining when you take the central locking fuse out then that system would be a good place to start, that 60 amp fuse in the engine bay runs almost everything... u might have a solenoid that isnt switching off or something.

 

[GTXMike]

Thanks for a advice i will look into that and let you know.

 

[Digsey]

Sorry for thread revival but im having the same problem, the drain drops when i remove the 5A fuse, im guessing that circuit will have some drain as its part of the central locking and immobiliser but mine is currently 90mA on that circuit alone?

Total drain is 130ma, is that enough to drain the battery over 2 days or should i be looking for other problems?

Thanks for any help

 

[da rok]

normal draw on the battery should be in the 11-15 milli amp range, what ive experienced in the past is a higher draw in the 100 milli amp range wont be a problem as the battery can take this for a while, but the constant discharge will damage the battery over time, especially if left for a couple days, so if the battery is flat the next day, you may need a new battery as well as fixing the drainage problem...

another thing you may want to check is if there is an alarm system or tracker in the car, these sometimes go wrong and can cause bad battery drain, ive been through 5 car batteries with netstars lovely system and eventually had the system removed after getting their module replaced several times...

also check for other things like the boot light staying on even when closed etc...

 

[Digsey]

Thanks for the help, im going to have another look at it tomorrow to see if i can narrow down which circuit is causing the drain as the 5A fuse is part of the central locking, diagnostic connector, multitimer and instrument panel circuits, all of which work but there must be something wrong with one of them to cause the 90ma drain when the car is off.
Even with that fuse disconnected i get a 40ma drain but removing other fuses doesnt effect this so no idea how to get down to 15ma haha.
Ill report back tomorrow anyway, hopefully find out whats causing it.

 

[Digsey]

Ok so i investigated a bit more today, the drain today was 80ma when i first tested it, i then turned the ignition on and then off, the drain changed to 130ma and stayed like this for over 30mins (thats how long i could be bothered to wait to see if it changed)

If i remove F21 (5A fuse) from the passenger side fuse box, the drain drops from 130ma to 40ma, when i put it back in it goes back to 80ma.

As F21 runs a couple of circuits i moved to the engine bay fuse box,
removing Fuse number 8 drops the drain to 20ma
removing Fuse number 10 drops the drain to 50ma
Unfortunately these are both labelled as "dashboard" so doesnt really shed any light on what could be the problem.

Not really sure where to go from here to be honest, how would i test the individual components connected to the f21 circuit?

Just for clarity there is nothing connected to my diagnostic port, and ive also tried disconnecting the alternator incase that was goosed but that made no difference at all.

I found these diagrams in this thread http://www.cliosport.net/threads/engine-fuse-box-list.786994/#post-10978727 which will help with my explanation, thankyou to @Arran_ for posting them.

any ideas on where to go from here?

 

[da rok]

f21 runs the uch which controls most things on the car, could try giving all the plugs and earths a clean? could try unplugging the wiring to the doors, cluster, radio etc... anything that the uch runs