Short causing battery to die.

[DodgeZ]

I seem to have short in my Omni. If I don’t run the car for a couple of days it will drain the battery dead and I mean dead dead. It is a brand new optima red top battery too. Anyone else ever have this kind of problem? Funny thing is there is a lady at my work with a 3.0 lebaron. She stopped by my cube today asking about it, her car is doing it. What are the chances of that? She said that she had some problems with her fuseable links too.


Thanks

[Dan Culkin]

Verify that it's a drain - disconnect one of the battery cables (doesn't matter which one) and connect an ammeter in line - one lead goes to the cable, the other goes to the battery. You should see a very small current, that's normal. If you're seeing like 1 amp, or even 1/2 amp, you really do have a drain.

For testing - leave the ammeter hooked up, and pull each fuse one by one, until the drain goes away. That should give you a pretty good idea what's pulling current.

[DodgeZ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dan Culkin Verify that it's a drain - disconnect one of the battery cables (doesn't matter which one) and connect an ammeter in line - one lead goes to the cable, the other goes to the battery. You should see a very small current, that's normal. If you're seeing like 1 amp, or even 1/2 amp, you really do have a drain. For testing - leave the ammeter hooked up, and pull each fuse one by one, until the drain goes away. That should give you a pretty good idea what's pulling current.

thanks!

[New_yorker84]

note that when doing that,some things will not be fixable or show when pulling fuses, i had this issue, if you want to see my loving time, you can see my cardomain at http://cardomain.com/id/fyres84ny pics there, anyhow,what he said is right though, to add to this, i have a 0.02 milliamp draw thats with my radio and trav memory, you should not exceed like 0.10 amps? i think it was, make SURE when you do this test that you:

A) close all doors
B) Test the amps, wait a few minutes and test again, some things in memory are timed (on my car i got a bad reading because of a door timer for the auto illum)
C) Much Much eaisier if you have a friend help you, once you find the circut, you can find out exactly where its shorting using the poke and move method.
this is where you put a ground at the very beginning and move down the line (i did 5 inches apart moving down till i found mine) basiclly just move the ground to where the + was last until you dont light up,move back, see if it lights, than you found where the short is (within those last 5 inches) this worked for me real good, wish i had known before hand,

P.S. sorry if you already fixed the issue, at the very least this info could help someone else out.

[turbovanman]

It could be your glove box light, trunk or hood light etc. They will kill a battery in a few days. Good luck!

Fusible links won't cause the battery to die, unless its the alternator feed but usually, if they fail, you lose items, IE power windows etc. I am starting to see more Dodges in my shop for blown fusible links, they must get weak with age.