So i have a red top optima battery and once car starts up it runs w/o dying. If i drive it daily for distances(not sure how much) starts up every morning. However if the car sits for 3 days battery is dead. If i leave charger on to keep it charging starts up fine. How do I go about finding where the damn electrical leak is at? battery terminal looks new and he grounded the neg battery line to the inside bay on passenger side. Its a 1982 SR5. Power steering, Cruise control, ac.
You could possibly have a few things happening here. First I would take it to a parts house and have them do a battery and charging system check. Shouldn't cost any thing and will rule those out. Next, if it is current drain, you can remove all of the fuses, and with a multimeter that measures DC current, jump each of the fused circuits one at a time keeping notes on the readings you get. Make sure that if you use an alarm, that it is armed when you jump across the fuse, so that you recreate the conditions from the 3 day period when the battery fails. This check should include everything in the fuse box under the hood too. The multimeter will be fused internally to protect against excessive drain, but from the sounds of it, the drain is not large enough to ever blow this fuse (they are usually 10 amp fuses).
Is 45 bucks too much for a shop to find electrical leak but not fix? Sounds reasonable but i've never paid someone to work on a car for me before...
Check out (Maintenance/Repair, 1989-95 Pickups) on this very same site and scroll down till you find (My Battery Keeps Dying) which was initiated by site member: Military Hitman. Pretty good thread on how to trouble-shoot your problem. Obviously a different year truck, but it will still give you an idea where to start. Joe
So yea like Litneon said have the battery checked to see if it is a bad battery. But first id do the second thing he suggested cause this way if you find a problem you dont waste the 30 or so dollars to have the battery tested. But there is an easier way to go about it. Removing the fuses works too but then you gotta put them all back in there right slot.. which is a little time consuming. So i suggest this.... Heres what to do. You will need a test light. Can be bought cheap. Dissconnect the (-) side of the bettery and connect the testlight in series with the battery. Connect one end to the (-) cable end and the other to the battery post. Now with the key out of the ignition and EVERY off. Look at the light and if it is still on that means that while your car is off something is still on and putting a draw on the bettery. This is what is causing it to drain overnight. To locate the draw(this part sucks) Start pulling fuses one at a time and keep watching the light. If you pull a fuse and the light goes out, the draw is comming from that fused circuit. Find out what that fuse is for and that should lead you to what could be draining your battery! Its the same idea Litneon had just another way of going about it. <a target='_blank' title='ImageShack - Image And Video Hosting' href='http://img68.imageshack.us/my.php?image=drawtestingip3.png'><img src='http://img68.imageshack.us/img68/5724/drawtestingip3.png' border='0'/></a><br/><a href="http://g.imageshack.us/img68/drawtestingip3.png/1/"><img src="http://img68.imageshack.us/img68/drawtestingip3.png/1/w640.png" border="0"></a> Crude pic i know. Hope it helps.
