Technical Battery drain

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Technical Battery drain

Fiat500xrealbob

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May 19, 2021
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67 plate 500x battery drain

Good evening everyone
Sorry of this has been posted before but my fiat 500x has been sat for no longer than 2 days and it has a parasitic drain some so wouldn’t start without jumping it or charging it. More recently it has been happening more.

Just wondering what possible drain it
 
Could be the battery getting old and self draining especially as we have had quite a bit of cold weather recently.

Only way to confirm if the car is draining the battery is to fully charge the battery and then to measure the current being drawn by the car.

The best way to do this is with a "dc current clamp" meter as no battery terminals have to be disconnected.

On the 500X if you need to insert a current meter into the vehicles battery -ve lead this is easier as the vehicles -ve earth strap/connection is a quick release type.
 
I had a similar issue with our Panda. It appeared to have a parasitic drain, but in fact had a failing battery. We had just had one battery failure and I swapped out my wifes car battery and it too suggested a parasitic drain as well and two days later it was dead as the cars original. It transpired that both batteries were failing and had internal shorts. The car was losing current after its being shut down and from other posts on here it was shown that this was during a period after switching off until the car settled into resting mode. With new batteries in place on both cars the drain has gone, and we have had no further issues. Some drain is to be expected but 0.01A to 0.1A and were were seeing 0.5A The higher level drain goes on in the newer car for c. 15 seconds and the older one (2011) for more like 2 minutes, hte current drain then drops right back as the body computer shuts down.

Even with 0.5 A drain the battery should have been quite happy to have been left for a week without an issue. It wasnt. Initially the first battery died and came back after a charge before failing totally. The slightly newer battery just refused to do anything but again still read 12.9V. Confusing!

Try removing the battery over a weekend if you can and see if it drops. Ours showed 12.6V+that should have been OK. I tried my smart charger on it and it would not even accept it was connected to a battery. I replaced it. After being off the car for two weeks had eventually droped off and would then not take a charge at all even from a conventional charger.

Testing the car showed the charging system was doing as expected.

New batteries dont seem to last like they used to and stop start batteries are even shorter lived. If 4 years old or more suspect the battery!
 
I had to have a new battery just weeks after getting my 500x. I was told it was because of it having been sat in showroom for a few months.
It was changed under warranty and been fine since
 
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