Parasitic Draw?

[HENRYW]

I have a 2012 Ford Focus Sedan MK3. About a week ago I started noticing problems starting my car. It would take a couple key turns before the engine would turnover, and the battery was very weak. As the week went on it got worse and worse until the car wouldn't start and the battery would go dead the more I tried. I got jumped it and took it to the shop to test out the battery. Battery tested fine, and it was charging in idle. After charging the battery I stopped at the gym for 1-2 hours, and the car started up fine, but after parking overnight the battery was completely dead once again in the morning. We concluded that there must be some sort of parasitic draw, but after doing a draw test and pulling fuses we couldn't locate the source of the draw. Anyone have a similar issue or any advice on where to start in locating the draw from here? 

[iantt]

how was the battery tested? and how did you check for current draw?

 

[Tdci-Peter]

3 hours ago, HENRYW said:

until the car wouldn't start and the battery would go dead

Have you verified that it was the battery going dead, and not a problem with the starter system?

Ideally use a voltmeter to measure the battery voltage, & put the headlights on without the engine running. Though if the battery is really low, the headlights will dim.

Also it could be a charging problem, if the battery has very low charge it may start when engine is warm, but not cold.

Did you measure a parasitic load? To flatten a good, charged battery in say 12 hours would need a couple of Amps of current, not just the few mA of the normal standby load (remote c/l receiver etc.). Like Ian, I would be interested to know how the load was measured. It can be quite tricky to measure the low standby current on a system that can supply & draw 100s of Amps. A standard multimeter might well blow its protection fuse on connecting it up.

I (and Ian, I suspect) have the Focus Mk3 wiring diagram, and it is available on this site:

but it is 130+ pages of A2 drawings, and is not very easy to follow. If there is definitely a parasitic draw, it may have to found by elimination, removing fuses.

[iantt]

i check current draw using multimeter in series with battery and a fused wire with crocodile clips attatched while operating central locking ( this stops multimeter fuse from blowing) with bonnet latch locked or switch connector bridged having same effect. then fused wire off, check draw over a 45 min timescale. systems dont go to sleep much before 25 mins.

[Dee_82]

As ian said, in line current testing is the best way to work out whats going on, pulling fuses in sequence will help isolate a dodgy circuit, just make sure you have left the car door open, if you o0en the door after leaving it for 30 min the car will wake up again, open the bonnet, open a door and leave it, you will see on the multimeter the current draw will drop, hopefully to <100mA.  a quick and easy test is to see if the cluster tunes off after about 25min the screen should be off, if its not then something might be keeping the car alive, if your not doing long drives it could simply just not have enough time to fully charge it.