Can anybody give me an idea of what battery current I can reasonably expect to be drawn when the car is fully locked?

I had to change the battery at the weekend (which I believe was original to the car) as it completely gave up being able to crank the engine on 2 trips no more than an hour apart and with absolutely no warning (dash lights would flicker and needles randomly moving around). I was interested in finding out what the quiescent current was, which at the moment is sitting around 75mA after several minutes being locked. This seems rather higher than I might expect, as that's 2Ah of battery capacity per 24 hours. I was thinking more along the lines of 20mA for some reason.

Alternator seems good (14.4V when charging), and no problems actually starting.

Car is 2009 Titanium, no bluetooth or USB, or any of the other things that have been known to cause parasitic drain.

Thanks.

If its a 2009 chance are he battery is in need of changing.

As I said, I changed it last weekend.

Just now, rpb424 said:

As I said, I changed it last weekend.

Sorry misread that.

Actually, I may have been a bit hasty. Trying it again this morning and leaving it for over half an hour the current has now dropped to somewhere around 10-20mA, so hopefully all's well. Strange how they choose the timings for when things shut down.

9 minutes ago, rpb424 said:

Actually, I may have been a bit hasty. Trying it again this morning and leaving it for over half an hour the current has now dropped to somewhere around 10-20mA, so hopefully all's well. Strange how they choose the timings for when things shut down.

On a lot of Ford's the 12v sockets stay live for a period after the ignition is off, maybe it's things like that 🤷‍♂️

How can you check the draw on your battery with the ignition off, in mA?  I have a multimeter and checked my battery etc, just bought a NOCO charger for it and it like to just keep a track of things. If you could give me a quick 'how to I'd be most grateful 

I only have one 12V socket and there's nothing in it. No matter anyway.

Depends on the meter you have - mine has both a 10A and 300mA range. You can just use the 10A range straight away with the meter in line with the battery, but get a bit better resolution on the 300mA range, so I do the following in this case.

• Remove the battery negative lead
• Place a jubilee clip or similar over the battery negative terminal just slightly tight to give a few extra small surfaces to be a able to more easily connect small things to it.
• Reconnect the battery with a short (15cm 'ish) piece of reasonable gauge wire (2mm maybe) with a croc clip on each end i.e. one clip to the battery terminal  (jubilee clip) and the other to the clamp on the battery lead. Wire doesn't need to be too thick, we're not going to be starting the car. This wire will handle the current necessary to get the car locked.
• Lock the car
• Wait a minute or so for the current to fall to within the 300mA range and then you won't risk blowing the multimeter fuse. Obviously you can't see this happening as the meter isn't connected yet, but it should be below 300mA after that time.
• Connect the multimeter in ammeter mode across the same places as the short lead i.e. the meter and the lead are now in parallel.
• Remove the short lead - all current is now going through the meter.

. Obviously don't try and unlock the car again or do anything else without replacing the lead or the meter fuse would blow.

Excellent, thank you very much those instructions are perfect. I know what I’m doing this weekend!

My cigi lighter is on all the while on the pre-facelift 2011 that is why i never put my dash cam off it so had to run my own ignition multi unit with 2x power point 2xusb

off the fuse box on a ignition fuse.

Is there any easy way to check rough to see what power is being used as not got a meter and if i did wouldn't have a clue,like to know on the pre-facelift what runs

when turned off as i know a few things do like the cigi lighter in the front.