pingman

Hi all,
Took the car for a ride after charging up the A/C. everything was fine. Parked it in the garage, let her rest a week or so got ready to hit the little white ball, and baby got no juice to turn her motor. Charged it up with the neg cable disconnected. She started, drove her in the country for an hour or so, shut her off, she restarted fine a couple of times. Three days in garage and I checked her, she had no battery power. Checked around the A/C nothing obvious. Checked the faithful rennlist and found a thread about a possibly grounded A/C evaporator blower motor and a relay in the smugglers box. Removed the fuse to the blower motor and disconnected the relay in the box charged it up, Checked the voltage to the battery each day and on day one lost about .5 volt, day two lost three volts. The alternator seems fine. I plan on removing the battery from the car, charging it and letting it sit to see if the voltage drops while not connected to anything. The car is an '87 911 carrera. This happened suddenly. any suggestions are appreciated. One last question, how is the best way to check the millivolts in a circuit at the fuse panel? Remove the fuse with a good battery and put the leads across the fuse holder?

Thanks,
Mark
(pingman)

theiceman

want you really want to know is how much current draw you have with the engine just sitting , my SC draws about 8 ma,( milliamps ) and that is just to run the clock I imagine.

disconnect the positive lead of your battery with everything off and put the meter in between positive lead and the battery. have one lead in ground on the meter and the other in amps. Unless it is an autoranger start at the highest current level ( amps ) and move down until you get a reading in the ma range.

When you see your number ( which will be very high I am sure ) , start popping fuses until it drops, this will tell you what circuit it is on.

pingman

Thanks iceman I' ll try that instead of my first plan. It's two days since the thread and your answer, and I have been charging the battery, It does not seem to want to accept a charge. I tried to charge it at 10 amps (neg terminal disconnected) and both the charge and battery got very warm. I reduced the charge rate to 2 amps for a day or two and we'll see what we get with your advice. Thanks again. By the way did you get a new stick yet?

lfe132

If the batt. doesn't want to accept the charge, could just be a bad batt. BTW, you said the altenater "seems fine", did you actually test it to make absolutely sure its ok? Don't leave anything to chance.

theiceman

I would say grab a new battery .....

and no new stick :-(

dshepp806

yep,..battery..

?

DS

pingman

Hi everyone,
I have not been able to look at the car for a couple of days due to pulling the night shift. Hope to look at it this weekend. The battery did charge up according to the meter on the charger. I have just left it for the past week on the two amp trickle charge. The alternator seemed okay, lfe132, due to driving the car for a while and the way the car started the few times that I shut it off. There was no sluggishness indicating a drained or low charged battery. This battery is probably 7 or 8 years old, so it is about due for a replacement. I have an 86' with an optima battery and I remember other threads about interstate batteries. Anyone have any thoughts or preferences on a battery? (This oughta' start an argument!) I appreciate everyone's help. I hate electrical gremlins. I'll keep you posted. Mark

Mike Murphy

7 or 8 years on the current battery? Consider yourself lucky (or talented) - you've managed to squeeze out quite a bit of life in that one

scottb

Even if you discover you have other problems, you should replace a 7 or 8 year old battery. If it's not bad now, it will be soon enough.

If you're not fanatical about weight (or brand name), you should consider the Costco Kirkland brand battery. It's big and heavy, no doubt, but it fit perfectly, installed easily, the price was excellent, and (IIRC) it has a 100 month warranty with the first three years not pro-rated. I've had mine for about a year and have been very happy with it.

theiceman

the last thing you want is your battery leaking acid, consider yourself lucky and change it ,you won't get much arguement over batteries ..anything that will start it .. I use an interstate and no probs.

pingman

Hello everyone,
I checked the ma load the way theiceman told me to and had about .78ma draw on the battery. When I turned off the hood light it dropped to .33ma. Just for fun I pulled all the fuses one at a time to see if the current would drop, it did'nt. So I took the battery to my local shop and had it tested, yep bad battery. They will have to order one which should be here late this pm. While I had the battery and vent blower out, I cleaned everything up good with soap and water and painted my bracket and polished the bolt that holds it all together. Thanks for the help and replies. My two cents worth on another thread about why I own these cars. The constant persuit of perfection from an inanimate object that has a soul, asks for so little and delivers so much. A rocket sled on rails baby!
Thanks again everyone!
Mark

old man neri

So your hood light only draws half a miliamp? I think not. Are you sure you have the right units?

theiceman

yeah somethings not right ..... even my clock drew I think somewhere in the order of 15ma. If the units are in fact wrong he is drawing about 780ma maybe ...

mark check again , make sure the leads are in the right places and you have the range set right ..

all the best

pingman

10-4 iceman,
I'll check again, and ya'll are probably correct that I did not read the scale correctly. But it will have to wait a little while. We are headed to the southern most point of the U.S. for a little R and R. We'll be gone about a week, so if the new battery is dead when I get home, then the search will begin anew. Thanks again everyone for your time and effort.
Mark

theiceman

okay this is a test right ???? is it Key West or does the US go further South somewhere else ? like towards Mexico ?