Well - the other week I took it to the dealership to have them check it out because I had noticed that on a weekend my battery started full (~12.7) and a few days later it was down to 11.9V... Also, my left turn signal was blinking double fast sometimes and then other times went back to normal so I thought maybe there was a short or something ~$270 later they told me I don't have a parasitic draw, that it was only drawing ~34mA which is normal, and that I just needed a new turn signal lamp even though it was intermittently double fast. I wasn't able to speak to the Tech firsthand...
Anyhow - this past weekend, I wanted to spend more time looking at the draw b/c I knew I had seen high current but wasn't sure what was normal, what the pattern was, or which circuit it traced to. I narrowed it down to the Radio Fuse in the passenger side j/b based on initial review of current with and without it.
Not having a data logging multimeter and not wanting to sit there for an hour and a half recording readings, I used a video camera and recorded three scenarios:
1) car locked for 25 minutes.
2) car locked for 20 minutes with the radio fuse removed
3) car unlocked for 35 minutes
What I found was that when the car was locked, I would see a pattern of about 20 seconds worth of 500mA draw followed by about a minute of 32mA draw for a period of 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, it stayed at a solid ~30mA... Seems quite acceptable and normal to me.
When the car was locked with radio fuse removed, I saw a ~300mA draw for about 10 seconds and then down to a solid 26mA solid... So clearly all the activity above is tied to something in the Radio fuse.
When the car was unlocked (radio fuse in place), for the first 15 minutes it was ~600mA draw solid, then dropped to ~130mA draw solid for another 15 minutes and then down to 27mA draw solid.
Based on what I see above, there does not seem to be a parasitic draw. After driving around on the weekends, I've checked and my battery has been ~12.7+ so it seems like the alternator is doing it's job well enough. I'm still monitoring my battery to see if it goes down in voltage over a few days after I know it was at full charge. Still stumped so far. I have seen that my alternator fluctuates significantly sometimes when certain things are running - for example when AHC kicks in the alternator output drops to < 13V, also oddly when I hold my driver side window up buttons in the up position the alternator output drops to ~12.8V if I hold em up for a few seconds. Have no idea what that means. My alternator's output since I've watched in the past few months has never put out more than 14.2V and that's only for the first few minutes after startup and when the temps are 50s right now (vs. 13.8 high when the temps were higher). Most of the time I'm in the low 13's - like 13.3 or 13.5, not much higher than that while driving and while idling always around 13.3 after warmup.
Still monitoring, not sure what to conclude:
- Don't think I have a parasitic drain unless it's intermittent or only certain conditions
- don't think it's the battery (been through a few)
- don't think it's starter related
- perhaps a weak alternator?
- could there be a link to the intermittent double fast blinking and the battery drain? I don't think so, just throwin it out there.
Also, I did some basic voltage drop tests to make sure at the terminals and grounds that I have good connections.
saga continues...
