Battery drain

PILOTBILL

MEMBER
2009 KIA RIO
1.6L
4 CYL
2WD
AUTOMATIC
77,344 MILES

Hello, I have a question for you. We have the car listed above.

My question is this, if the car sits for more than 4 or 5 days, the battery will drain down so low that you can’t start the car.

Do you have any ideal what could be causing this? We have had the car checked at the local dealerships. They can’t find anything wrong. We were told that the battery, alternator and starter are all good.

Do you all have any ideals what could be going on? The wife and I are both seniors and we don’t drive much. Sometimes it might be a week or more before we go anywhere, then I will have to hookup the battery charger to charge up the battery before we can leave the house.

We are tired of spending money at the dealerships, then being told that there isn’t anything wrong.

Please help.

2 Replies

94 TRANSAM

MECHANIC
680 POSTS

This is fairly easy to trace down but if an issue does exist it will likely not be an easy fix.

At this point I would suggest checking it out to see if there in an issue or if this is a normal condition based on what you have in the car that draws power.

Car batteries all by them selves have a 3% + or - discharge rate per day. So after 5 days your battery will lose about 15% of its charge. You will also have a constant draw from the radio memory circuit. This is normal. Anything else you have in the car such as Phone chargers with a light on them will draw more power just from the light. A GPS unit left plugged in will do the same. Or any accessories that have been added may draw power.

The test is easy to do, you will need an amp meter which you can buy for about $25.00.

You put the meter on the positive battery cable and turn it on and it will show how many amps is being drawn off the battery. Then you pull 1 fuse at a time until you see the draw drop. If you pull a fuse and it makes no difference, put it back in. If you pull one and it drops some but not to 0 leave it out and keep going until you get the meter to 0.

When you are done which ever fuse or fuses you left out will tell you which circuit(s) are drawing power.

Once you get that far let me know which ones you pulled and we can go from there.

Rich