New Battery Keeps Draining - Help identifying why?

[RowanVW 0]

Recently finished an ABF conversion,

 

KR and ABF battery were useless so i bought a new battery with a 2 year warranty, that im not sure I can find the receipt for!

 

In the 2-3 months I have had it, the battery has been fine, car has always started, then recently I changed the clutch, clutch fork, master and slave cylinders on my car, so I didn't drive it for over a week + I had the boot open to get to my tools and I thought that my boot light drained the battery...

 

So after a jump start I left it running for a while and then turned it off, an hour later the car wouldn't start again,

 

The next time I took the car for a drive and the battery would start a few hours later but not the next day, at the moment I have no battery jacket but I would think this is less of a problem in summer?

 

The Voltage jumps from 12 to 14v as the car is started so the alternator is working fine, I have taken the boot light bulb out, I have no stereo in at the moment, the after market remote central locking system I use has never caused problems before on either of the cars I installed it too...

 

Where else could I be having a power drain from? Or have I simply destroyed the battery by leaving it for so long?

 

Any advice at all is always appreciated, thank you!

[aide 0]

starting with dumbass question, are you sure your battery is actually flat, and its not an intermittent starting problem?!

[RowanVW 0]

Yes lol, well of course as I had recently taken the starter off and various wiring had been disconnected I though that I had done something wrong putting it back together;

 

Then i noticed that the fuel pump prime was severly weakened in sound and eventually the central locking stopped working last after the fuel pump stopped making any noise at all!

 

+ The fact that a jump start cures it instantly, but thanks for the input!

[aide 0]

ok you want to start by measuring the leakage level at the battery with the ignition off, clocks etc pull miminal current, switch cabin lights off though.

 

the old school method is to then systematically pull fuses noting the reading, if it drops to zero then you've found the circuit to blame, you then take it from there testing components and noting the drawer until you find the short.

[RowanVW 0]

That sounds sensible, how do you measure the leakage level? Is that where you connect across neg and pos terminals? Or from positive to the chassis earth?

[aide 0]

neagative side only, try this guide - http://www.wikihow.com/Find-a-Parasitic-Battery-Drain

[RowanVW 0]

Followed that guide exactly, but unfortunately don't think I have enough charge, as I don't get any readings across the multimeter, will have towait till the girlfriend is home and get a jump start from her trusty TSI Polo :)

[RowanVW 0]

Update, jump started, runs nicely, left it running for about 10 minutes... Battery Voltage as running sits at 14.33v,

 

Turn the engine off and it drops to 12.5v

Then slowly drops over the next 5 minutes to 12.03v and seems to stabilise

 

So following the wiki guide disconnect the earth and put my multimeter in between on a setting of max 200ma as per wiki, I got 0.00 which indicates no draining and then a few minutes later when I tried to start the car it was dead again, the speedo seems to jump and the time display fades but the car doesn't even have enough power to turn over and the fuel pump whines weakly...

 

Thoughts anyone, i'm losing faith in the car after all the money i've spent rescuing it...!

[joebloggsVR69 0]

I had a similar thing, with a battery that's only 2 years old which gets trickle charged in my garage when not in use.

Same as you, it kept draining after a few minutes and wouldnt turn over.

 

So I went to ECP and bought a new battery, and now it's fine :)

[RowanVW 0]

Haha i'm thinking that must be the problem, it has a 2 year warranty so i'm gonna have to really search for the receipt, shocking for it to lasted only 3 months though!

[RowanVW 0]

Changed the battery, all working now, new halfords battery with trade went from £65 to £38 so not to bad! Still dissapointed with GT's £40 battery going after so few months but lets see how this one gos!