My battery keeps dying
 

My battery has been dying if I leave the car for 50 hours. The only mod I have is the winjet fog lights. The power to the lights is straight from the battery but the power to the switch is from a power source that doesn't have power unless the car is running. Is it possible that there is a slow power drain even when the car isn't running or did I mess something up?

Some more Q's to give people a better idea on how to help:

- Is it normal for you to leave the car uncranked for 2+ days before the Winjet fogs?
- Who installed the foglights?
- Have you had the car in for maintenance recently?
- Have you disconnected the fogs from the battery to try and determine if that is the source of the draw?

I'm shooting in the dark without these answers, but part of best practice for any electrical troubleshooting involves (1) checking the circuit as a whole with a multimeter to try and find a draw that isn't supposed to be on car 'off' mode, and (2) having the battery tested.

How To Perform a Parasitic Draw Test - EricTheCar…: [ame]http://youtu.be/KF1gijj03_0[/ame]



For your case the first thing to disconnect rather than going to the fuse box should be the wiring on the winjet foglights then move onto the box.

I have had battery issues a few times this year. both times was leaving the car in auxiliary mode while working on it. Had to jump it both times. I felt it was strange that it happened while only being in that mode maybe 30 minutes at most.

If you have it in Aux, make sure your HVAC fan settings are turned off. It can be a pretty hard drain on the system. (no idea if that is actually the cause, but throwing it out there as something I noticed)

I had left it before and it was fine, I installed them myself. I'm going to take It off The battery next time I leave my car for two days. I was planning on doing that but I'm not sure why it would cause it to drain when the switch is connected to aux power inside the car. It shouldn't be draining the battery but I don't know.

Panasonic usually makes pretty strong batteries, but in my experience with our OEM model, once I accidentally ran the battery down leaving my dome light on, it never retained a strong charge thereafter.

I've swapped out for the Optima YellowTop Dual-Purpose Battery, Group 75/25, 620 CCA - Model # D35, no problems since, even after accidental run downs.

That might be the cause I left my dome light on 2 weeks ago and now it dies after then often. I'll try removing the fog lights off the battery and if it still dies that may be the cause.

Uhh...that really doesn't make sense.

Correct switched power circuit:

Source>switch>load device.

How can you have "power to the lights straight from the battery" if you have a switch to control the power to the light lights?

If you actually have "power to lights straight from the battery", then then the lights are energized continously and the switch plays no role.

I thought it was weird as well but look up the winjet fog lights. The lights turn off when the switch or car is off. It goes power > lights > ground but then the switch also has power and a ground. The switch is connected to an aux power and the headlights are connected to the battery. The winjet how-to video shows it.

Ahh...OK. They're using a switched ground to make and break the circuit.

No theres a ground next to the lights and another one for the switch.

^this

Alright so it's still happening and I bought a multimeter and when the car is off it's drawing .68 amps. I pulled the dcc fuse and it dropped down to .2, so then I unplugged my ca-fi dashlinq head unit inside the car and put the dcc back in and it was at .2. Why is this head unit drawing so much power when its off? I haven't seen anyone have a problem with this

The Ca-Fi stays in a standby mode that is user-configurable. I have mine set to 2 days, no problem. You can opt to turn that off completely and you'll just have to cold boot it each time you start the car, until you get a better battery that is.

Mines set on cold boot, I don't understand why it's drawing so much or is a .68 amp draw normal on an off car?

Spec is <70mA

My multimeter is on dc 10a. So .68 is 680 miliamps isn't it?

Unless my understanding is wrong, yes .68 amps would be 680 milliamps. Maybe the 10a means you have to step it down by a factor of 10, so it's really 68 mA? Not an electrics guy, sorry.

Just checked another thread - Subaru apparently told another owner that there really isn't a published spec for our car, but most of these cars should be < 70 mA. They tested another car on the dealer lot and it was 150 mA, Subaru said that was a normal condition at this time. So is it <70 or 150? Guess they don't really know either. Here's the link to that post: http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showp...2&postcount=38

But yeah, 680 seems high.

I had a similar issue, mine was due to the trunk not closiing properly and the light staying on.

I replaced the trunk light and dome light to a low power LED's

During the issue I measured the power consumption to get a better understanding on what was beeing consumed

Off , 12.70 V, 600mA
30 sec, 12.74 V, 140mA
60 sec, 12.79 V, 14mA
90 sec, 12.79 V, 13mA

So you need to wait for 60 seconds to get the true power consumption.

You did not say what year.

I have a 2015 with about 4500 miles on it. I had not driven it for about 5 days. Went out to go to work and the battery was dead. Not even enough energy to light up the clock.

Had Toyota Road Side Assistance so off to the dealer it went. They got it started with a jump and then measured the battery and the charging system. It seemed to be fine, with the battery showing 12.41 volts when the car was off. But the tech was not satisfied and brought out an old "carbon pile" [as he put it] tester and the battery failed miserably, dropping to 8.3 volts under load.

In short, it "looked like" it was good until it was asked to do some heavy lifting at which point it failed. They replace the battery under warranty.

He also measured the 'no key in the ignition' current flow. It would bounce between 22ma and 26ma. The bounce was the security LED turning on and off.

As a side note, when I got the car back they had reset the clock to the correct time :thumbup:.

Arvid

Mines a 2015 as well, I ended up buying the battery someone suggested earlier in this thread and it's working wonders.

I think Panasonic batteries are super cheap.

Never had a good one.