QuestionDear Mr. Ritter,
Thanks for replying so quickly. The answer to your questions is: The garage had absolutley no clue as to what is draining the battery but whatever it was was huge. The told me it would take about 4 hours to check it out and at $80/hr I cannot afford that. The trunk light is off, no other electronic amenities were added to the car.
I did have a thought though. My O2 sensor is not exactly perfect. The guy in the garage once rigged it up after it almost fell off so I could pass my inspection (which I did). Am I wrong in assuming that this sensor has electrical wiring? If so, might it be possible that because it really does need replacing that the wiring somehow is shorting or whatever and is causing this problem?
The only other plausible explanation is maybe the battery cables need replacing or the door mechanism is shorting. I DON'T KNOW. Doesn't help that I'm a female, not exactly a car expert and need to correct this. I was thinking about taking out the fuse which governs all the electronics in the car, putting a meter to the battery and doing a process of elimination procedure. Or if there IS a wire to the O2 sensor, disconnecting that.
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Followup To
Question -
My battery has a serious drainage problem verified by a local garage. The car starts immediately with a boost and runs great. The battery light doesn't come when it's running, but let it sit over night it won't even click the next day. New Interstate battery. No lights or radio are ever left on...EVERYTHING is off except for the clock.
The only dilemma I have is that the electronic door mechanism keeps on clicking when I open and shut the door when the engine is runnung. But that started a couple of years ago and my battery problem just began a few days ago. I'm going to try to go through the process of elimination in finding the culprit. Meanwhile I'm just taking off the neg. cable off the battery. Any suggestions would be extremely helpful. Thanks.
Answer -
In order for the battery to drain completely overnight there has to be a huge current draw on it, something like the headlights or parking lights on, but you say thats not the case and it would be obvious so the problem is somewhere else.
Did the local garage make any kind of recommendation as to what needs to be done and did they tell you how much current is being drawn from the battery?
Has anything been added to the car recently that could cause this( audio amp,anything electrical?)
Check the trunk light , make sure it goes off when the trunk is closed, just a guess, it shouldn't draw enough current to make the battery go dead but check anyway.
AnswerIf you have a volt/ohm/ammeter connect it in series on the negative side of the battery, disconnect the battery terminal and connect the ammeter leads with one to the battery post and one to the ground wire, set the meter at 10amps to start and with everything off see if there is a current draw.
If there is then start removing fuses from the fuse panel under the hood and then from the panel inside in the left kick panel, do this one by one until the current draw stops, when it does you will know what circuit is causing the problem, try disconnecting the O2 sensor directly from the connector first, the O2 sensor has a heater circuit designed to heat it up before the exhaust gases do, so that may be the problem or just try disconnecting the sensor and let it sir overnight and see if the problem goes away, let me know what happens.
