Alright guys,
had a horrible day today. I went to change my alternator with the one in my parts car. I was almost positive it was my alternator that was bad. I needed to charge my battery about eveyday to drive it for that day. By the end of the day, the battery was drained. I dont have the cooling hose on my alternator because I have an a/c delete bracket, i dont think it could be that though. I did install my radio and this started happening around the same time, i think. I just took my alternator out today and brought it to autozone, it tested at 13 volts. So did the one outa the parts car. Now I dont know what to do. I need to solve this NOW. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks

 

Have you ever done a measurement of the 'dark current' when the car is turned off? It should be 25-50mA. Sounds like you might have a constant fused drain or unfused high resistant short since you installed the stereo. If you are familiar with a multimeter it can be measured as long as it's less than the rated ADC rating of the meter. Usually if it's a dead short it will fry wiring; yours sounds more like a steady fused drain. You say the battery is fine, have you had it load tested or just taken open circuit (OC) voltage with it out of the car? If the OC voltage drops when you connect it up, you have a major current drain and/or a bad battery. Did you do anything with the alarm circuit, if you have one, when you did the stereo install? More info here can help pin it down.

 

I know absolutaly nothing about electronics. I dont know anything. I think I might have to take it in on this one. All I know is that my volts were slowly dropping. At first I only had to charge my battery once every 2 days or so. Now its everyday, is that my battery being killed by this? I am lost! I had to hook my stereo to some battery power line and not my ignition because I couldnt find the ignition wire. If the ignition is the red wire, it for some reason didnt give any power...thanks for the help

 

If it started happening at the same time the radio was changed, try unpluggin it for a couple of days and see if that fixes it.