[bally]

Hey guys. Got an issue with the sierra draining batteries... bought a brand new one 2 days ago and by the next afternoon iv got .5v left in the battery, charged it up again yesterday and this arv im back down to .5V. is there a common issue with sierras doing this? Iv ripped out all the dodgy wiring that was in it to start with so I think im looking for an issue in the standard loom or standard electrical item somewhere.

Any help will be much appreciated.

Cheers
bally

[bally]

If anyone has a link to or a copy of the standard wiring diagram for these that'd be great also, thinking that while im ripping out old dodgy wiring I may as well clean up the non essential stuff from the original loom....

[Scrawny]

Have you got an ohmmeter? I'd be setting one up and pulling fuses till you find the issue. Usual suspects like stereo, lights and any other extras added in.
It must be a pretty big load if it's draining that quickly

[bally]

No stereo in the car, no driving lights, no interior light, only non standard item is a inline facet fuel pump but you can hear that clicking away when running..... got me thinking it could possibly be the alternator, I measured it charging at 17v when revs were sitting at 2000rpm. If the voltage reg has died I wonder if it can feed back to the alternator somehow??

[bally]

The weird thing is I measured the battery to be at 13.8V when I turned the car off at 6-630pm last night. Checked it at 10pm and it was at 12.4V. So to me it doesnt seem to be draining excessively fast initially but must drop something fierce once volts start dropping down a bit and this load starts to draw more current

[Scrawny]

Disconnect alternator and see if that helps tonight. I was thinking either alternator or starter

[Blkfxx]

Look into replacing the alternator, It may or may not be related to your battery draining issue, But 17v will kill a battery pretty quick.

[Mike57]

To fault find you are best using a clamp on current meter and then disconnecting circuits until you find the problem. Jaycar have one on special for $99 at the moment. Without a current meter you will struggle to pin down the exact problem.

[bally]

And unfortunately without a charged battery its pretty hard to find where its being drained from... charging the battery up again tonight and see what I can make of it tomorrow after work... was hoping there was a common component that dies and drains a battery down but judging by the comments thats not the case. Time to rip my meters out and sort this birds nest of wires once and for all...

Does anyone have a wiring diagram for sierras??

[Blkfxx]

http://www.suzukiinfo.com/

[bally]

Mate that site is awesome! Thank you very much

[whincup]

bally wrote:

The weird thing is I measured the battery to be at 13.8V when I turned the car off at 6-630pm last night. Checked it at 10pm and it was at 12.4V. So to me it doesnt seem to be draining excessively fast initially but must drop something fierce once volts start dropping down a bit and this load starts to draw more current

12.6v is a battery at 100%. 12.4v isnt far below that. batteries tend to hold a slightly higher voltage fresh off the charger, but that disappears after a short time. so dont consider the 13.8 to 12.4 drop, its meaningless.

im with blkfxx, 17v will kill a battery. its possible that that is the reason the battery is fucked.

[Scrawny]

12.4v is a flat battery.

[Blkfxx]

[Jezza86]

Check ys alternator still has a sense wire at all...
soinds like its outputting all the volts it can

[bally]

Thats one of my jobs for this arv jezza. About to tear this loom out and start fresh with a non butchered one...

[bally]

refer to my build thread, believe we found the issue!!! viewtopic.php?f=4&t=49508&p=867179#p867179

[Munster]

I had trouble with my battery losing voltage, turned out to be the Mitsubishi Falcon alternator draining up to 1 amp overnight. I have replaced the alternator with a Bosch Falcon one and now have no issues. Go Figure.

[Gwagensteve]

That was a faulty alt. my car is parked for long periods with a falcon (EF-EL) alt with no discharging at all.

[Moph]

Thought I'd drop this here for future reference ... it's the Sierra wiring diagram from the factory service manual, but cut and shut together into a single JPEG.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cwxaxtqaw4ak0 ... m.jpg?dl=0

[Mike57]

Just thought that I would add this note here. My Jimny with a relatively modern ECU drains 200milliamps continuously while parked. I have now set up a single 20 watt solar panel via my Ctek 250S dual battery controller and on the weekend it was giving out over 1 amp of current in the sunshine. Both my main and standby batteries took 2 days to reach full charge. The 250S will charge the starter battery after the secondary battery is fully charged. I recommend this approach for anyone who has their Suzuki sitting idle for long periods. The solar panel only cost me about $40 bucks from a place in Brunswick street in Melbourne.

Mike

[Gwagensteve]

200mA! That seems very excessive.

[Mike57]

Hmmm! Just did some reading and you might be right. Only the stereo and the ECU should be draining any current when the vehicle is locked. I measured it at 200mA but that could be anywhrere between 100 and 300 with the possible inaccuracy of the clamp on current meter. I might need to look more closey and isolate it but at any rate the soalar panel has fixed the issue for me immediately.

[Gwagensteve]

That's well below the ability of a clamp meter IMHO. use the meter as a normal ammeter when current flow is in that range.

Steve.

[murcod]

You should have more like around 20mA drain. I've checked previous vehicles and they've been around 30mA with aftermarket alarms fitted (at that low level the alarm LED on the dash flashing causes large fluctuations in the reading.)

Disconnect your earth lead from the battery and put a decent multimeter inline to measure it. Start on the 10A range as there is often a current surge when you first reconnect the battery.

[Mike57]

Yep, I will do that on the weekend and report the results.