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I fixed a parasitic drain on my car in 408 days

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Re: I fixed a parasitic drain on my car in 408 days

#371

Post by rendall »

egeozcan wrote: post #368
o10449366 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife, bless her heart, leaves everything partially open. Not even just open, but she'll screw the lid on jars just enough where if I pick it up by the top they'll drop. It drives me crazy.

People always think that they are compatible if they share more or less a common understanding in big subjects, but stuff like these really test you. One of my exes hated onion, and when I look back, this made my life way more insufferable than having to hear the (to me) weird political opinions. "Oh I'd like to have this salad but please no onion, and please don't use a knife that's used to cut onion when preparing!…

When my girlfriend at the time told me she doesn't like soup (any soup, of any kind) I knew it wouldn't work out.

Re: I fixed a parasitic drain on my car in 408 days

#372

Post by dclowd9901 »

Electrical issues on cars are the absolute most maddening things to diagnose and fix. I’ve restored several cars and worked on every car I own and the one thing I loathe to do is figure out an electrical failure. Even in older cars, it’s a pain in the ass.

I have an 89 e30 and one time the dash cluster started acting up. Essentially the tach and speedo weren’t responding (they’re not cable driven). Took out the cluster, checked all the connections, checked the wiring diagram to see if there were any potential grounding points I might want to consider. Nothing.

Finally called a local bimmer indie shop and asked them what they thought and they directed me to the small reverse light switch wire that feeds down through the shifter hole into the transmission tunnel. Apparently it often rubs against the body and becomes shorted. I looked and sure enough it was bare. Patched it and all was well.

This wire, mind you, is not at all on the dash cluster circuit. There’s no reverse indicator light on the cluster or anything like that. I would have never had any reason to suspect it was the problem. This is the nature of automobile electrical issues.

Re: I fixed a parasitic drain on my car in 408 days

#373

Post by coding123 »

rjzzleep wrote: post #369
matheusmoreira wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've met a lot of women who do stuff like this... I asked one why and she told me it's because they don't want to be a bother. Fully closing the door makes noise, screwing on lids can make it hard for people to open them later. So they don't. They close it just enough and leave the object in that almost there state.

I think this is more an anecdote than anything else. My wife leaves all sorts of stuff open, and it's really because she's not paying attention, i.e. most of the time she's not fully present. I'm glad to have read this, it gives me a little comfort to see that other people deal with same issues. Sometimes I just close the door for her when she's in the restroom. I feel like a lot of these habits come from having live…

I'm getting older and one of the things I started to notice is that men are just there, doing things that are generally... straightforward. I mean I guess posting on hacker news is probably pretty strange to a lot of people - so ignore that.

Anyway, women however, I feel like they build these neurotic behaviors - like learned things that just stick with them forever. Like ouch, the pan was hot, don't do that again, but for EVERYTHING. So by the time they are old, just nothing they do makes any sense, to anyone, even other women.

Re: I fixed a parasitic drain on my car in 408 days

#374

Post by dclowd9901 »

xyst wrote: post #363

Personal vehicles are getting way too complicated now. Too many electronic components that can be points of failure. Recently viewed a video on “steer by wire yoke” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=agMrewRJTow It’s very interesting but there are so many additional motors, sensors, and actuators to simulate the same experience as mechanical based steering. If you lose electronic assistance in traditional mechanical based…

Well, they’re also incredibly noisy and unreliable. I’d be willing to bet most of the ecu code is simply Bayesian filters to deal with terrible sensor data. Cars are hard environments to get the kind of high fidelity readings you really need for the nitpicky engines they have now.

Re: I fixed a parasitic drain on my car in 408 days

#375

Post by dclowd9901 »

jws wrote: post #2

I have failed to find the parasitic draw on an RV (slower than this one, it takes a couple weeks to kill the battery). I finally got a "Top Post Battery Master Disconnect Switch", which is a little dinglebob that goes between the battery post and cable and lets you easily break the circuit. I highly recommend the $12 solution for an intermittently used vehicle.

You really should have one anyway. Good for emergency shutoff.

Re: I fixed a parasitic drain on my car in 408 days

#376

Post by antod »

cwillu wrote: post #63
lylejantzi3rd wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems like mechanics really don't like digging into the electrical part of the car... Tell me about it. I'm in a similar boat. My audi a4 has had a parasitic draw for the past 10 years. My mechanic didn't want to take the time to address it because that sort of thing takes a serious amount of time and he's always backed up. I got out my fluke and narrowed the cause to what I believe is the comfort control unit.…

If you can identify the fuse for the unit, it might be less annoying to pull it when parking rather than hooking up a charger.

Yeah, I had an old car where the useless tape deck developed a short (I think) that would drain the battery after about a day. I didn't know it was the stereo until I played around with removing fuses one by one though.

Re: I fixed a parasitic drain on my car in 408 days

#377

Post by Sakos »

coding123 wrote: post #373
rjzzleep wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is more an anecdote than anything else. My wife leaves all sorts of stuff open, and it's really because she's not paying attention, i.e. most of the time she's not fully present. I'm glad to have read this, it gives me a little comfort to see that other people deal with same issues. Sometimes I just close the door for her when she's in the restroom. I feel like a lot of these habits come from having live…

I'm getting older and one of the things I started to notice is that men are just there, doing things that are generally... straightforward. I mean I guess posting on hacker news is probably pretty strange to a lot of people - so ignore that. Anyway, women however, I feel like they build these neurotic behaviors - like learned things that just stick with them forever. Like ouch, the pan was hot, don't do that again, b…

Reminds me of the stereotype that women will tell you something that happened in the most expansive way possible with all this context that doesn't really matter while guys will just tell you what happened.

Re: I fixed a parasitic drain on my car in 408 days

#378

Post by Kirby64 »

WirelessGigabit wrote: post #339
noizejoy wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With my car, trying to lock the doors just doesn't work if one is left open for suburban single family residence dwellers with their own garage, they may not always (or ever) lock the doors while the car is parked in their locked garage.

Which is one of the things one must absolutely do to ensure all modules go to sleep.

No car I'm aware of requires this. If the ignition is off and the doors are all closed, the car is, for all intents and purposes, asleep. If anything, doors unlocked may be lower power... as that would disable (or, rather, not enable) alarm functionality.

Re: I fixed a parasitic drain on my car in 408 days

#379

Post by lukevp »

overthrow wrote: post #3

Well this is timely. I have a parasitic draw on my NC Miata. The first mechanic just replaced the battery. The second told me it's normal for the battery to die if you don't drive it for 3 days (because "cars have computers now"). It seems like mechanics really don't like digging into the electrical part of the car... but these days that encompasses more and more of what can go wrong. Without time to dig into it myse…

I also have a parasitic draw on my NC Miata, and ALSO use a battery tender every time I park it! If you find out the issue, let me know, would be interesting to see if it’s the same!

Re: I fixed a parasitic drain on my car in 408 days

#380

Post by makerdiety »

karolist wrote: post #68

My father (a professional auto mechanic) took about 6 months to find a random engine shutoff during harder cornering in his Toyota, the culprit was a damaged inner insulation layer for a few wires within the wrapped wiring harness for the ECU, engine moving on the engine mounts would sometimes cause a slight harness shift and a short would cause a hard reset of the ECU. Another story I have is my computer geek friend…

Skill and dedication indeed. The cost of being able to determine the root cause of the car problem probably costs more than the car itself. By a factor of ten.
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