Something is draining the battery in my Maverick when the car is shut off. The alternator is charging a new battery. When the car is off for short periods, it starts up just fine. But when it sits for the better part of a day, or overnight, there isn't enough juice to start it. How should I go about finding what's doing this?
How do I go about doing that? I feel like I'm asking questions with obvious answers, but automotive wiring is new to me and I want to know how to do this the right way.
take it to any auto parts store or battery shop. they have a tester to do it. if you can drive the car there they can check the whole E system...free.
It seems like many of us have had an elusive low-voltage draw at some time or another. Mine ended up being the door buzzer up under the dash. Not enough draw to make it buzz, but enough that when I touched it, it was warm. Cut the wire, threw the buzzer away, never had a problem since.
YES, I agree that we all had one or more problems like this. Mine was the wiper motor wire an the door buzzer. One day it just kept buzzing until I unpluged it totaly.
Start by doing the test in the link, if it is drawing over .1A you most certainly have a issue... Most often the problem is leaking diode(s) inside the alt but as others have mentioned there can be other issues as well... A quick test is use a test light instead of VOM, but it absoultly has to be one with a std bulb & NOT LED... If it lights moderately to brightly, there is enough current draw to discharge the battery...
One thing about old cars is that the wiring is old & brittle,I know it is a pain in the *** but it`s probably best to just rewire the car.Wiring breaks & rubs & it can just cause shorts all over the place.If I restored one of these cars for the street I would do it.
many new stereo installations can cause this sort of thing if they are wired incorrectly.. but my money is on the alternator too.
I had the alternator and battery tested today at the local Napa. The alternator failed with flying colors. The battery wasn't fully charged and just barely failed the load test, but they did me up good and replaced the battery for free under warranty
Installed new parts and the alternator light in the gauge cluster stays on. Replaced the voltage regulator and still no change. What am I doing wrong?
need to make sure its wired up correctly. also check the fuesable links to see if one of them is bad.
yeah.. and maybe even get rid of the old inline wire type links and move towards the actual fuse style since they can visually inspected for easier troubeshooting in situations like this. Can't tell you how many times I and others have chased our tails not realizing the inline links were bad because there's no visual damage sometimes. Also seen them get corroded inside the wires casing and work intermittently/reduce voltage flow as well. Test lights and multimeters can be your best friend for these types of issues. Also be sure to ground everything really well. Tough to have too many ground straps on any engine.
Had the same problem just last week on my 79 'Bird. Turns out the battery wire was bad even though there was no blistering or bubbling anywhere in the harness to indicate such. Even the fuse link looked good.
