High amps parasitic battery drain 2009 focus 1.6 tdci

[Marty...]

Hello,I have sourced a module which is on its way to me by Saturday,my serial No. 7m5t14a073 DE the used one is 7m5t14a073 DF

Will this be plug and play? F is a later date only?

I only ask as if I do not need to buy the elm cable yet it will help my pocket.

Thanks

[Marty...]

Will i need the extended licence with forscan to read the GEM module?

Thanks

Marty

[nicam49]

Dunno, try looking on the   Forscan website... 🤔 

Also, if you haven't yet bought an ELM cable, then I can recommend you buy from Tunnelrat electronics.  They're not expensive, and dependable to work well with Fords. 

[Marty...]

Thanks nicam49   appreciate the pointer,I really should have thought of that myself 🤪

No need for the license for GEM.

I am ordering from tunnelrat tonight,the usb version.

Thanks for your time 👍

Marty

[Marty...]

Hello,can anyone please confirm that changing the GEM does not require keys to be reprogrammed.

Thanks

[Marty...]

Since this car arrived it has has been sat on my drive which has a slight slope so the bonnet is lower by 6 inch,yesterday I found damp in the passenger footwell and some standing water under the back seat on the near side, after lifting the carpet I found a puddle,using a turkey baster I took out three and half basters full and I am still soaking up the remnants...I followed the trail all the way to the seals in the top corners of the hatchback where the plastic roof trim ends,it was all dried and cracked and possibly some water getting in the tail lights.

I know these are known faults and want to thank all who have posted with this issue.

Can this water in the car make the battery drain?

Thanks

Marty

[Marty...]

Hello,I am still chasing this battery drain,removed the heated windscreen fuses with no change also disconnected blutooth and removed audio modules fuse and I am sure my meter is correct at 16.25A current drain.This is with ignition off....

I have read that the ignition barrel can leak through a micro switch,if I bridge  the exciter wire to the solenoid with my meter will this show drain through the ignition barrel?

I am reading as much as I can on the subject and getting fit cycling everywhere...lovely rain.

Thanks

[Tdci-Peter]

3 hours ago, Marty... said:

removed the heated windscreen fuses with no change also disconnected blutooth and removed audio modules fuse and I am sure my meter is correct at 16.25A current drain.This is with ignition off....

16.25A is indeed a huge current. It would flatten a good, new, fully charged 75AH battery in under 5 hours, much less in most typical cases. More important, it is nearly 200W of power. This has to make something get hot, power cannot just vanish. Even a item as big as a starter motor or alternator will get uncomfortably warm with 200W in it for an hour or so.

About the only place I can see this power going without apparent trace is into the glowplugs. The engine is massive enough that 200W will barely warm it to the touch. But even then some warmth should be evident around the plugs and in the wiring to them.

I guess that the battery is being disconnected soon after ignition off, to protect it. To do a temperature test like this would need a battery charge capable of over 17A to maintain the current long enough to track it down.

The most common cause of battery drain on modern cars is that something apparently innocuous, like a radio of bluetooth adapter, is faulty and keeping a CAN bus active, which then prevents other big modules like the ECU (aka PCM) from shutting down. The PCM takes a few amps while active, I seem to recall measuring about 3 to 4 amps on one test (ignition on, engine off). But I am sure it will not draw over 16A unless it is energising some heavy load like glowplugs, or maybe the a/c clutch.

Also there may well be some degree of current surge when reconnecting a battery, especially in a case like this where something is on that is supposed to be off. You need to monitor the current over a few minutes at least to see what it settles to. Your current clamp meter should be able to do this.

On the subject of clamp meters, most older ones were ac only, but newer ones (like yours) use hall effect sensing. It claims to be ac/dc and true rms, so should in theory be ok at dc. I would check it, as I never entirely trust complex items, cheap or expensive! A 55W headlamp bulb and a battery charger (or car battery) can be used to give a current of about 5A, which can be measured by a proper multimeter on 10A range. There may be a bit of a current surge at turn on, especially if a good battery is used. Then wrapping one wire to the bulb three times round the jaws of the clamp meter (so it passes three times through the central hole) should give a reading on the clamp meter three times that on the multimeter.

[Marty...]

Hello Peter and thanks for you response

Possibly tomorrow(weather) I will look into the glow plugs,fuse 6(glow plugs) in engine bay is a strap type,can I just measure across this whilst in place or best to remove?

I always believed no power to glow plugs until ignition switched on,is this possible somehow?even with the canbus network being awake,I have swapped out the GEM like for like(everything works)(blutooth unplugged) and this has had no effect on the battery drain.

Here is how I have the multimeter set to measure 10A,can someone please confirm this is correct.

The clamp meter requires the 'range' button to be pressed after connection so as to reset the sensor,it is reading 00.17-20 when clamped to the live battery lead,is this more or less the same reading from both meters?

Thanks again

[Waggy]

Can you measure ACROSS a fuse? Using a clamp meter to CONNECT to something? With all due respect, this doesn't sound as if you know exactly what you are doing? Can you explain in more detail exactly what you are trying to do and how you are going about it?

[Marty...]

Thanks Colin and you are correct I do not know what I am doing..hence why I joined the forum to get some help to learn what I need to know to make my car work.

If I had some money I would give it to the garage but the pandemic has made me poorer than I already was.

I want to measure if there is any current passing into the glow plugs,how I am going to do that I do not know that is why in my last post I ASKED if I could do it.

 

 

Marty

[nicam49]

You need to measure the voltage (if any) at the fuse, with respect (wrt) to the battery negative terminal. So black lead on battery negative and red lead on either side of the fuse, with the multimeter set to dc volts  if it's not auto ranging, then set it at 20volts or above. Always measure the voltage wrt the battery negative terminal. 

[Marty...]

Thankyou Nicam I can see that now

Marty

[Tizer]

2 hours ago, Marty... said:

is reading 00.17-20 when clamped to the live battery lead,

00.17 Amps is 170 Milliamps not 17 Amps. For a car of that generation it is what I would expect shortly after turning the car off with all doors closed and everything else switched off. If left for about 1/2 hour it should bottom out at somewhere in the region of 0.030 Amps. This all assumes that your meter is reading correctly.

If you want to check the Glow Plugs then put the clamp on the wire that feeds them while set to DC Amps. If they were on all the time then they would probably have burned out by now. While you are there it would be a good idea to do the same to the Alternator to battery wire because a faulty Alternator can cause a parasitic current draw.

You need to find out if you do have a parasitic draw or not before looking at the fuses. You can tell which ones have current flowing by setting the meter to Millivolts and measuring across each fuse. If you check some of the Youtube videos they will tell you how to do it and more importantly how to interpret  the results.     

[Marty...]

Thankyou Tizer,the car starts and stops and runs ok but if left the battery drains,I did the simple test first measured the battery and left the car for two hours whilst checking the dash and radio interior lights were off and I could not hear anything powering up during that time ie cd disc loading,relay clicking.

The battery dropped half a volt in two hours

I am going to start over and write stuff down

Thanks

 

[Waggy]

2 hours ago, Marty... said:

Thanks Colin and you are correct I do not know what I am doing..hence why I joined the forum to get some help to learn what I need to know to make my car work.

If I had some money I would give it to the garage but the pandemic has made me poorer than I already was.

I want to measure if there is any current passing into the glow plugs,how I am going to do that I do not know that is why in my last post I ASKED if I could do it.

Marty

Don't get me wrong, it worries me to death when people start poking around not too sure as to what they're doing. I've seen kids with lumps of copper embedded in their face just because they had the test meter set to amps instead of volts. There's enough energy in the car battery to destroy your car and leave you blind or even worse if you get it wrong. So safety first and make sure you don't short the battery or select the wrong range. Make sure you don't do this accidentally when placing your current clamp round any of the wires. Using the millivolt range across a fuse MIGHT detect whether there is a current flowing or not, but won't be accurate enough to measure the actual current. If you follow the post further down (or up?) called Mk1 battery Drain there's some useful info on how to find the problem. Good luck and stay safe!

[Tizer]

24 minutes ago, Marty... said:

The battery dropped half a volt in two hours

Personally I would not worry to much about the voltage, it's the current draw that is important.

12 minutes ago, Waggy said:

There's enough energy in the car battery to destroy your car and leave you blind or even worse if you get it wrong

I can attest to that. When I was a young lad I had a watch on that had one of the Stainless Steel clamp type bracelets that were popular a while back. Whilst under the bonnet of a car my watch strap momentarily bridged the battery positive terminal and its clamp which was obviously earthed. There was so much instant heat that the watch clamp welded itself together and burned my skin badly. The only way I could get it off was the prise the weld apart with a screwdriver. As @Waggy said take care.  

[Tdci-Peter]

3 hours ago, Marty... said:

I did the simple test first measured the battery and left the car for two hours whilst checking the dash and radio interior lights were off and I could not hear anything powering up during that time ie cd disc loading,relay clicking.

The battery dropped half a volt in two hours

A very good rule is not to wear any metal items while working near a car battery or live circuits, and to be extremely careful with metal tools. When a battery says 700A CCA, it means it. In fact when warm and charged it can deliver far more current than its CCA rating. 12v may be a safe voltage regarding electric shock, but those huge currents can be very dangerous.

battery voltages are in fact a very complex function of charge, temperature, load, time and battery age/condition. If the engine had been running, then I would expect to see a slow decay of voltage once the engine stopped, even with no discharge current at all. It can take 6 hours or more to settle to a stable value, and that will vary a bit with temperature. A reasonable test would be to monitor battery voltage every hour or two, with everything off, ideally for a couple of days (maybe every 6-9 hours  after the first 12). Just opening a door can turn stuff on, not just the interior light, but the GEM/BCM will wake up. This can cause a little dip in voltage that might take an hour or so to recover back up to near its value before the door opening.

It should settle down to about 12.5v (a bit more for a decent new battery, a bit less maybe if the battery is a few years old or not fully charged.) Dropping below 12v with no (intentional) load after say 48 hours would be the alarm point for me. That would suggest a parasitic drain or a battery well past its sell-by date. Though the real test is to start the car after a week idle. My battery (Bosch S5, now over 9 years old!) has started the car fine after over 10 days idle. I have been charging it if idle time gets up to 2 weeks, which has happened a couple of times in the last year. It usually decays to a little under 12.5v when left idle.

[VFR800]

This is a riveting post, please keep the updates coming, great reading.

[Marty...]

Thanks everyone,I will start over with a recharged battery,I appreciate the safety advice as I know enough to know when I don't know and need help before doing anything.

This is a new battery bought just before I started this thread it is calcium/calcium,one of the issues is the battery being drained in testing to the point it goes too low to start the car and needs a recharge,I believe the battery will only tolerate so much of this and then it's had it.Charged the battery last night and it now reads 13.03v.

A few days before I can look at it again.

Thanks again everyone

Marty

 

[Marty...]

Hello again,shortly after the last post I made in this thread I decided to sorn the car until I could get some proper time to look at it.

I have found that the auxiliary heater was the source of the battery drain,removing fuse 5(80a) in the engine fuse box confirmed this.

I am correct in thinking this is controlled by a temperature sensor?

If so please can a kind person confirm this and advise as to its location.

Took it round the block and it showed the EML, getting dtc p1402 EGR metering orifice restricted,does this mean  the car thinks it is cold(auxiliary heater on) and as such is giving more fuel to the injectors?

I have forscan and the elm cable from TR but as yet not figured out how to see what condition the cdpf is in using this program.

Tailpipe is black with greasy soot.

Any input gratefully received.

Thanks for being here

Marty

[Tizer]

1 hour ago, Marty... said:

I am correct in thinking this is controlled by a temperature sensor?

It is controlled by a combination of ambient and coolant temperature. Have a long read on FORScan's website about how to read PID's, you should be able to see what temperatures the car is seeing, probably under the PCM Module. There may also be a HVAC Module which may be helpful also, or the HVAC may be controlled by the GEM. 

If the Supplemental Heater is working with just the ignition on then I can't help thinking your GEM is at fault.

The EGR code is unlikely to be caused by temperature or the GEM. Best to clear the code and see if it comes back.  

[Marty...]

Thanks @Tizer i did clear the code and it came back after another run round the block.

I also have noise that sounds like a compressor shutting down happened once driving and on switch off.Possible split hose?

Do I just connect forscan to the car and start the engine to read the PID's selected

I am a carer I get small money for what I do(not about the money)and as such I cannot put this in my local garage.

[Marty...]

Anybody near Cleveleys, Fylde coast Lancashire with some knowledge who could help please.

Marty

[Marty...]

I have looked at the Forscan guides and it is above my understanding.

Sorry.

Marty