Battery woes yet again

[JSIL1]

so, I reran the battery cable to the trunk and the car ran fine for three days. Now I went to start the car today and it was stone dead.

I have not changed the way anything is wired since I first did it.

When I first ran the wire the car lasted over a year with not so much as a hiccup. now I'm lucky if I can get through a few days without having to jump it.

The only things that have happened since the original install is that I recently upgraded to a better cable (2ga Welding cable). fixing my heavyduty headlight harness after a damn squirrel ate through some of the wires. I have removed one of my amps. which to me seems like it should make this problem less likely to happen.

I know that there is a way to put an amp meter between the negative terminal and the cable, but doesnt this need to be done in such a way that the servos and what not dont wake up. When I had my mechanic take a look at the problem a long time ago, he said that when he unplugged the headlight harness and the battery to the trunk cable that the amps went to their nomial draw of I think .4 amps.

I truly am stumpped and could use some ideas, espically seeing as though it has begun to snow and dealing with jumping a car in winter is just a pain in the butt.

Oh yeah, could the battery cable get cold enough as to raise the resistence. and for the time being the battery has been under the hood just to see if the rewiring took. so the battery is in it's stock location and I am still getting this issue.

would a capacitor fix this problem?


and sorry for all of the questions my problem solving ideas are pretty much tapped out.
Thanks,


-Josh

 

[Ian Macoomb]

The colder the wire the less resistance it has.

You've either got a bad battery that won't hold it's charge or a parasitic drain somewhere. I think it's the latter. What you could do is charge the battery up and pull a bunch of fuses out of the fuse panels (both under the hood and under the dash). Then monitor the battery voltage. I bet if you were to pull every fuse and come back a few days later and put the fuses back in, the car will start.

An easier way would be to pull each fuse individually and use your multimeter to measure the current. Put the probes in the fuse terminal and measure the current. You should have less than 0.1 amps or current flow with everything shut off.

 

[JSIL1]

well...that definately rules out the wire being the problem

I'll take a look at it this evening...that is unless I am out playing in the snow..

Thanks

 

[Vroom]

You're not alone, Josh.

I've been having battery woes similar to this recently. One morning the battery was completely dead (<1 volt). I got the battery exchanged hoping that would fix the problem. I drove the car with the new battery and all seemed fine. I let the car sit for 5 days, checking the voltage to be sure it wasn't draining on me (it wasn't). Then I had to drive the car a few times on the 6th day, and two days later the new battery was completely dead.

It seemed strange that the car was fine after sitting for 5 days, but after driving it died two days later.

Good luck. I know I'll need it.

 

[JSIL1]

What is really getting me is the fact that it worked so well and now its ka-put. Is there a chance that the headlight harness could be causing all the trouble? I know that little fuse box next to the battery go wet one time and all the fuses were destroyed but they got replaced. could a rusty circuit board do that?

Vroom, best of luck as well. If I stumble upon anything I will post it in case it may be helpful

 

[Sagabu]

Check the connections and cable to the main box.