Favour Needed - Anyone With Toad Ai606

[M@tt 77]

This is a bit of a follow on thread to my previous one about my ongoing battery drain on the mi16, this weekend i went to go out in the mi but found it had has suffered a flat battery again!! I've only fitted a brand new battery less than 1 month ago as the old one was found to have a duff cell so not keeping charge(luckily it was still under halfords warranty so got a free replacement).

 

The first thing i checked was that the alternator wasn't overcharging and cooking the battery. It was reading 13.4V so i believe that is safe so i'm happy that the alternator isn't fooked and killing the batteries, although when i revved the engine the charging voltage dropped by a few0.1v rather than increased which is what i would have expected(is this right?)

 

I've investigated the current drain on the battery when the ignition is off and found that it has 0.8A drain(checked all interior lights etc are off). This drops to 0.3 when i remove fuse 7 from the fusebaord, which covers the fag lighter, stereo electric wiindows etc

 

With fuse 7 out i then proceeded to pull all the plugs out the fuseboard to try and identify which wire was supplying the alarm (cant rememebr which one i used) but none of them caused the current drain to drop so i think its one that comes stright from the battery and not via the fuseboard.

 

What i could really do with is some one to compare what values they have, ideally with the same Toad Ai606 alarm. What i'd need is to connect a multimeter up using the amps setting remove the battery negative terminal and put the multimtere between the the lead clamp and the -ve battery terminal, see what reading you get and then see what reading you get when you remove fuse 7.

 

As a comparison i checked my 106 and that only read 0.1a drain when ignition was off so i'm currently 8 times highter than that

 

Any help appreciated as this is driving me nuts!!

[Toddy 7]

M@tt

 

My elise drained flat after going on hol for 3 weeks it has an alarm and immoboliser, the 205 with just a Immoboliser started up on the key.

 

The solution I think is to get a battery conditioner, just bought an Accumate from eliseparts, you can leave these plugged in 24/7 with no harm to the battery and comes with quick release connections. If you google 'eliseparts+conditioner' that is the one I bought.

 

Cheers

[Anthony 1,000]

Have you tried unplugging the fuse for the Toad and seeing how that affects the current draw?

 

0.5 amp draw for the stereo (or something else on that circuit) when it's switched off does sound quite high though...

 

13.4v isn't brilliant for the alternator btw if there was no significant electrical load on it at the time - really should be 13.8-14.2v or so. Any notable electrical load will pull that down though - headlights, interior fan etc.

[M@tt 77]

david does that battery conditioner need plugging into the mains? read the bumpf but couldn't see if it said but i assume it would. Not very practical for me unfortunately if it does as i would get pissed off having to plug/unplug it and leave it out on the drive or take it back in but i like the idea

 

anthony the alarm uses a 12v unfused supply(as per the insatll instructions) so i'd have to try and work out what wire is powering it and thats gonna be buried up under the dash somewhere

 

gonna have another bash at it as its really annoying me

Edited January 23, 2008 by M@tt

[Toddy 7]

Yeah it is mains powered unfortunately.

 

If your only getting 13.4V that seems low, is there some resistance between the alternator and battery preventing the 'normal' 14.2V reaching the battery as isnt the output voltage regulated anyway, had this on a Mk2 Golf years back.

[Paintguy 0]

I have the Ai606 fitted Matt, so could try it out for you, but as with Anthony I wouldn't be happy if my alternator was only charging at 13.4V. That's only 2.23V per cell, which isn't much over the float voltage, and something more like 2.3-2.4V each is needed to charge them properly (13.8-14.4).

 

Did you check the charging rate at the battery or alternator? If it was at the battery, then I'd try it again at the alt. Set your MM to volts, with one probe on the output (large terminal) and one to ground (engine block or alt body). If you get a higher reading, then there's too much resistance in the cable or connections going to the battery. Have someone hold the revs at around 1800 - 2000, as alts don't always give full output at tickover.

[M@tt 77]

Excellent, cheers for the info chaps

 

I'll have a crack at it this saturday and let you know how i get on

[M@tt 77]

right well i have sorted my battery drain had to be the coldest day ever to attempt a dash reinstall and fannying about with wiring. I couldn't feel my face or hands after about an hour!

 

Anyway it turned out it was a combination of 2 things

 

i had fitted one touch electric control modules which were fitted in each door at the bottom underneath where the speakers are it looks like water had been either dripping onto them or sitting in the bottom of the door and submerging the end of the module causing them to short. Each module was pulling a drain of 0.2a when not even doing anything and to compound this they had been powered with a constant live instead of a switched live.

 

i rewired them to use a swtiched live and removed the modules until i can get some replacement ones so fingers crossed no more flat battery

 

Edited February 2, 2008 by M@tt

[Paintguy 0]

and to compound this they had been powered with a constant live instead of a switched live.

 

Now that would have made breaking in a doddle

 

Glad you've got it sorted though Matt. Any chance of it being ready in time?

[Super Josh 4]

Matt, are these one touch modules for closing the windows when you set the alarm? If so, then they'll need to be on a permanent live or else they won't work when you get out of the car.

 

 

Josh

[M@tt 77]

no they're not wired up to the alarm haven't got the self closing setup, its just for when i use the windows normally so shoul dbe ok with switched live, but yeah your right they would need perm live if on the self closer

[Paintguy 0]

Or supply them with one of the timed outputs from the Toad so they're live during closure, but 'dead' afterwards