hi, i had to call the RAC out to my wifes car yesterday, the car wouldnt start, not even turn over altough the lights on the dash were all working. the rac man plugged his little machine?tester into the slot and it said replace battery, which he duly did, car works fine now. could something be draining the battery as there were no problems at all untill yesterday morning. thanks

Pop a meter on it and check for a draw.

Cheers

D

thanks, ill have to get hold of a meter then ill give it a go,

One of the cells could have given up. Had the same thing when learning to drive, knackered battery in the instructor's Punto. Drove to my house fine then it wouldn't start again, but lights, etc were ok.

What reading are you getting from the old battery?

RAC man took away the old battery, new one is working fine at the moment, ive got a digital volt meter now to test for a draw on the battery, can someone tell me what is the best way of doing this, thanks

Remove earth lead and place meter between lead and post set to amps.

Cheers

D

going to sound like a stupid question m8, but how do i set it to amps
ive got 3 holes at the bottom
1st hole is 10adc 2nd hole is com 3rd hole is vqma

then ive got a dial with off at the top, then 600 at either side of that, ther is an a at the right side of the dial, is that side the amps
sorry to seem so thick but ive never seen one of these before

Dare I suggest reading the instructions.

I would think that a is for amps, usually is. Com will be the common return (black wire), third hole will be for the red wire.

Set the dial to amps (probably two or three different scales, you need the smallest)

Cheers

D

giorgio2 said:

the rac man plugged his little machine?tester into the slot and it said replace battery, which he duly did, car works fine now.

Click to expand...

dont that mean his tester had a flat battery

Close both driver and passenger doors with ignition keys in pocket.

Disconnect one of the battery connections. the multi meter will have ohms, or funny greek squiggle, amps (a) and volts (v), in ohms the meter should indicate zero when the meters leads are connected together, dont use those selctions, in amps you should get a few milli amps like 10-20, when you connect the leads to the disconnected battery connection and battery if you get 200 or more your wee car has a problem

Reconnect the battery.

Remove each fuse. bridge each fuse with multimeter...

Noel
Note David will do this different from me...

I've got a problem where the battery will not last more than 5 days undriven before I have to jumpstart it again. Because of that it's just munching through batteries. I don't want to swap out for a dry cell as they are a bit more expensive to kill off.

Only seems to really happen during a wet period aswell .

Thanks

Bit of damp creating a short, and slowing draining the battery?

Probably worth checking out just in case it ends up drawing too much current through and causes something to overheat.

I had the same thing with an 899 Cinq running flat after a week but that was because of a cheapo head unit.

Hmm... My indicator relay has been playing up which it never did before, could it be linked in that case?

My battery is inside the car but as far as i'm aware it's not being dripped on...

I'll get kritip to check it all over with his multi when he pops round next and test everything for live connections that shouldn't be.

Thanks

thanks for all the advice, just checked now with the negative disconnected, the reading is 24.5
is that normal, thanks

Hi

what units 24 milli amps is a bit high but should not flatten a 40 amp hour rapidly.

Noel