bradwilcox

Drove car yesterday, fine. Park in garage. Battery a tad low, as usual, so I use my cigarette lighter-to-wall 8amp charger to trickle it for a few hours. Have used it before, no problem. Now I remove charger, no power at all to anything inside car, totally dead. Battery tester direct onto battery shows full. No lights or radio was left on while trickling. Mystery. Sigh.

bradwilcox

Update: radio fuse was blown so entire dash and footwell lights were dead. Obvious, but since I hadn't yet used the key to test the ignition, it seemed even more of a problem.

V8BOB

You still have a problem. I'm not a fan of trying to charge a battery through the cigarette lighter. When I used to smoke I would use it to light my cigarettes and it did a poor job of that. Why are you having to always charge the battery?

Bob

bradwilcox

Bob: not sure. The alternator is good, battery is good. Either the battery warning light is wrong (the cluster has intermittent issues anyway) or I have a draw that is compromising me slowly and constantly. The problem used to be much more severe until I pulled the alarm/locks fuse and have kept that pulled. I've done further testing but it's not been conclusive. None of the usual suspects.

V8BOB

Have you tried testing it for a parasitic draw. Here's a site that describes how to do it.

How to Find a Parasitic Battery Drain: 9 Steps

Bob

bradwilcox

I have and the fuse for alarm/locks was drawing, so I've got it out for the time being. There seems to still be a draw but it is at a tolerable level i.e. weeks would pass before the battery got too low to crank. I am thinking the remaining draw is something more gestalt than a fuse.