Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2007 09:58:33 -0800
Reply-To: Don Hanson <dhanson@GORGE.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Don Hanson <dhanson@GORGE.NET>
Subject: Re: Tracing Electrical fault in Coach battery system?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
OK,
More on the "lost electrons"...I couldn't find any current flowing. I guess
I am not doing the millimeter properly some how. Something so obvious that
a 'real' trouble shooter wouldn't even think to explain it.
When I took off the ground strap to the aux battery and stuck in a test
light instead, it would blink very faintly...I am thinking the clock of the
stereo or something..When I take out the fuse, the blinking stopped. When I
put back the fuse, the light goes real strong for a second or two, then back
to the blinking faintly...
This a.m., after driving a few hour yesterday, the vehicle (main) battery
had a full charge at 12.8 volts..the aux (coach) was again back down to 12.3
volts. It had a full charge last evening after my drive. I have it
charging now and I put a toggle switch into the supply line to the
stereo..(needed one to turn off the face plate light for sleeping anyhow) so
I will re-charge the coach battery and then turn off the stereo power supply
overnight tonight to see if indeed that stereo is causing the drain...
It escapes me how to measure the current that the stereo(or any of the
fused circuits) is using, however. I have three different simple
millimeters, two analog and one digital. I can never figure which scale to
read or which setting to use on the analog ones, but the digital, I can.
Except when I try to read DCA...I get nothing at all.. "0.00" comes up on
the .2mA, the 20mA, and the 200mA settings..Zip..no indication that I am
anywhere near an electron..
Don Hanson
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard A Jones" <jones@colorado.edu>
To: <dhanson@GORGE.NET>
Cc: "Vanagon Mailing List" <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
Sent: Sunday, November 04, 2007 3:32 PM
Subject: re: Tracing Electrical fault in Coach battery system?
> Don:
>
> Remove all the fuses in your fuse block for the coach
> battery and then use your meter to see if there is
> a voltage across the fuse block where each of the fuses
> plugs in. There will be for the stereo, but should
> not be for any others if you have everything turned off.
>
> Or it may be your stereo. I have a Panasonic that can
> run my battery down in 2-3 days. If I remove the face
> plate, it does not. I have an odd suspicion that some
> circuit stays on if I play an mp3 CD, since I don't
> believe it happened before I started making mp3s. The
> display does not stay on. That's why I say "some
> circuit"--like the mp3 decoder.
>
> Turning off the music from bed with the remote was a
> plus for me, but now I crawl up and remove the face
> plate. :-(
>
> Richard
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