I’ve got an extra car, that I really need to get rid of, but until I do I need to move it every night so it doesn’t get a 24 hour parking ticket (I’ve received two already).
The battery is a 3 month old Die Hard. Last week I tried to start it and it was stone cold dead. Tonight I finally got it jumped, and reparked it. Since the battery went absolutely dead in less than 24 hours since starting just fine, I assume there’s a short in the system.
For the near term, I pulled the negative battery lead thinking I’d break the circuit. But then I thought if there is a short, that may be grounding somewhere else in the car, leaving the circuit open and still draining.
So, how about it, AutoDopes? Should I have pulled the hot lead? Both?
I just thought about this a minute longer and realized that it doesn’t matter where the short is, pulling either lead breaks the circuiiit with the battery. Thanks for your time, you’ll never get that minute back.
How far are you moving it each time you start it? If you pull more power out starting it than you put in driving it the battery will go dead. Slow charge the battery, try and drive it longer each time is is started(don’t just idle it longer) Good luck.
At least once every week or two you need to take it out and drive for at least an hour, preferably mostly at highway speeds, to give the battery a good charge. By running it for a couple of minutes a day, you’re killing the battery.
If a battery gets discharged too much, then it chemically damages the cells and it won’t hold a full charge afterwards. It may be dying so quickly now because the battery is pretty well shot. But that doesn’t explain why it died in the first place.
If the battery is only 3 months old (hmmm… what made you change it in the first place only 3 months ago?) then it’s probably still under warrntee. Take it back to the shop. They’ll test it and replace it if it’s toast.
If it died originally because there is something in your car draining it, then you really need to attack the car with a multi-meter to see what’s up. Measure the current draw with the engine off (being very careful not to blow your meter up in the process) and remove fuses one at a time. Hopefully you’ll find one fuse that makes all the excess current draw go away when it’s pulled. Then you know that it’s the circuit where the fault is.
If you have to ask how not to blow up your meter measuring the current then this is probably a job you should let someone else do. You did realize that disconnecting the battery will stop it from draining (even if you had to think about it for a minute) which is encouraging, but tracing down electrical problems in a car can be a bit challenging at times, to say the least.