Battery Drain

[Kevin88RRC]

My battery (optima red) is draining out over night. Will hold a charge if disconnected. Have not had it tested yet. Ran a battery drain test by disconnecting the positive lead. The reading between the lead & the terminal was 11.5 same as straight across the battery! Pulled fuses one at time and no changes. Disconnected the alternator... no change.

Am I testing the right way? Are there more fuses other than inside? What esle to check?

[roverandom]

You need to do the test on the neg side of the battery.

[sven]

You need to measure amps not volts.

[Kevin88RRC]

Thanks for the pointers. Guess I miss read the info I found.

I re-tested the proper way. I really don't know how to use the amp side of my meter so I just looked for changes. I did not find any smoking guns. The only thing that made a difference was the clock fuse which dropped it from .25 to .10 But the bonnet light still had a faint glow. It would turn off with the switch for the hood. The connectors were extremely corroded. Cleaned them up but it still glowed with fuse out. Then I realized that my interior lights had not been coming on with the doors opening. Turned them on via the switch & they work. Tried the doors again & now they are working with the timer.

So could it be very corroded connectors for the bonnet light??? Or could it be the timer relay for the interior lights??? How do I test the relay?

Tonight I am leaving the bonnet light un-hooked to see what happens.

Thanks again!

[roverandom]

You don't really need a multimeter to test for a drain if you are getting confused, you can do the same test with a simple test light if you like. Seems to me the int lights are working correctly. The clock will draw a small amount of current, this is also normal. The under hood (bonnet) lights are always a good source of problems for any veh and I can't think that our buddy LUCAS has made them any better for Land Rover. Let us know what happens.

[Kevin88RRC]

Just checked the battery. With the bonnet light unhooked it still dropped from 11.7 to 9.7 volts. Pulled the clock fuse and will check later to see what happens.

Could a bad timer relay cause a drain? The lights are working properly now, but they were not in the past.

[roverandom]

A relay either works or not. It is simply a means of using a small current to control a large current. Have you gone through all the fuse's when you did the test? A change of 11.7 to 9.7 overnight would indicate to me a small power user of some sort, keep on going with the test. Re-check all fused circuits, it must be something that has been missed. Hope this helps.