The car has a DC electrical system.
Test again.

 

How much are drawing boards these days?

 

Depends on whether it's an Apple or not.

 

it seems to be doing fine with the different battery in it

 

its not. go test again.

 

Test it properly in DC. Wait about a minute for everything to settle. Anything above approximately 20mA is unacceptable. As stated earlier, 150-200mA draw is going to indicate a single stuck relay.

I pulled a RS/alarm from a customer's E36 last week which had failed and was drawing 700mA! So if the alarm is poorly installed or nearly as old as the car it's definitely a possibility for issue.

 

ok. so here is the process of what im going to do if im understanding correctly. disconnect the positive pattery terminal. then let it sit for a minute or so. turn my multimeter to DCma. hold one end to the post on the battery itself, and then the other lead to the red terminal connector. get reading. then repost...

 

Yes.

 

ok. its going to be about 4-5 hours before i can do this seeing as how im still at work, but as soon as i do it ill post the results

 

Here's a pic for you

 

the picture is showing that i do the test on the negative terminal, but i was told earlier its tested on the positive. i appreciate the diagram but im now more lost haha

 

Yeah, I think that's weird too.

 

It is suppose to be on the negative cable as indicated in the picture.

 

Why?

 

Please explain why?

I did a quick google search, because i was curious and this is basically all I found.

"Polarity doesn't matter. Modern multimeters auto range and sense current, and will display correctly."

I know my multimeter doesn't show "negative" current draw when I got my leads switched up.

 

It doesn't matter. Best practice is to remove the neg terminal from the battery vice the positive to keep from accidentally shorting. Again... it doesn't matter.

 

This, I've done it both ways.

 

I've had a battery with a bad cell. It would hold 12.5V overnight. It'd try to start and before it made a full revolution, it wouldn't trigger the main relay any more. Suddenly down to 11v.

On a side note: It was a 100 month Acura battery on a 6 year old car. They said there's no proof it was the original battery. I asked him if he wanted a reciept from the time I paid someone not to change the battery. He was not amused.

Good advice. But if you have access to the fuses, why not just touch the multimeter leads to the fuse holder?

 

The reason I remember when being trained to be a mechanic(back in the '60's), it is safer and vitually everthing electrical in the car had to return via the negative cable(believe it or not, there are some exceptions to the "it's the same thing on the positive side" argument, even though with our cars it should not make a difference).

 

The first step is to set the multimeter in series with a batt cable, and the second step is to start pulling fuses, one at a time, till the numbers drop.

 

I assumed the step of 'remove fuse' was implied. Thus putting the multimeter in series with the battery. Just looking for a positive reading vs a drop. 6 of one, half dozen of another.

I was doing this for the interior fuse box once. It was much faster to test each fuse for a reading than pulling one and walking back up to the battery at the front of the car to look for a drop.

 

well. someway somehow ALL 3 of my optimas had bad cells in them. i appreciate all the help though guys

 

How was this diagnosed?

What was your current-draw?

I've got an 11 year Red Top that O'Reilly's says has a bad cell...it still fires right up, even after a week or two of sitting (when I ride my motorcycle).

 

Hard to diagnose dead cells on those batteries, can't open them up.

Only thing you can do is, charge it as much as you can and then let it rest. After about an hopur, throw your meter on it and see if you have close to 12.6 or single dead cell voltage of 10.5-12.2.

Yes, I have seen bad cells still produce voltage, but not enough to keep the bat 12.6.

 

I know the process, I was asking how he came to that conclusion. The thread is outlining the process for measuring current draw and he came back with dead cells in THREE dead Optima batteries. That's a hell of a coincidence, to say the least.

It's also not the process that's been described several times. Seeing as he measured current draw incorrectly once already, I was interested how he concluded the cells were dead. Maybe they're not dead and the battery he has in it now is barely able to keep up with the draw on his system.