Parasitic Battery Drain

[chicaria]

Turning into a parasitic brain drain. When I leave my 06 4x4 sit for a week or ten days it wont turn over when I go to start it. The battery was getting old so I bought and installed a new one. Ten days go by and I have a dead battery. The battery was at 12.6 when I installed it, just like the old battery.
I charged the battery and it's back to 12.6.
I hook up a multi meter to it and got a reading of 35 mili amps and started pulling fuses one at a time
looking for that big drop off in milli amps...it never came. I went through all of the fuses again, just to make sure and the reading of 35 mili amps never dropped. I even got my neighbor who's a retired electrician to come over and verify the meter hookup and readings.
I understand that there will be a normal parasitic drain from a clock and whatever that stays on 24/7
but a week to 10 days?? and the battery is dead??
What am I missing?

 

[thkbaron]

you may have got a bad battery. Doubtful but maybe. Mine was doing the same thing on my 18 and I replaced the battery and it's been good since.

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

Do you have premium audio?

 

[chicaria]

It crossed my mind that it could be a bad battery. I took the original new battery back and exchanged it for another new battery, the one thats in my truck now so I'm going to rule out the battery.

No premium audio, just the factory sound.

 

[PoMansRam]

How long did you wait to see the miliamp drop?

As you're pulling fuses, make sure the doors or closed, stay closed and then sometimes you still have to wait for all modules to go to "sleep". Some can take 20min or more. If you open a door, the process starts all over.

Some shops have a tool to keep the door switches closed (while the doors stay open) for this very purpose.

 

[Runaround]

Turning into a parasitic brain drain. When I leave my 06 4x4 sit for a week or ten days it wont turn over when I go to start it. The battery was getting old so I bought and installed a new one. Ten days go by and I have a dead battery. The battery was at 12.6 when I installed it, just like the old battery.
I charged the battery and it's back to 12.6.
I hook up a multi meter to it and got a reading of 35 mili amps and started pulling fuses one at a time
looking for that big drop off in milli amps...it never came. I went through all of the fuses again, just to make sure and the reading of 35 mili amps never dropped. I even got my neighbor who's a retired electrician to come over and verify the meter hookup and readings.
I understand that there will be a normal parasitic drain from a clock and whatever that stays on 24/7
but a week to 10 days?? and the battery is dead??
What am I missing?

How do you hook up a multimeter to look for a parasitic drain and what setting do you use?

 

[Daw14]

May want to charge that new battery to be certain your starting with a fully charged battery. Should be over 13 volts when charged full , more like 13.4 usually.

 

[HEMIMANN]

AGM batteries hold a charge longer (or more charge). Many of us have switched over to them for this reason. Some guys have upsized from the H7 size to the H8 as well. H8 requires cutting off the hold down tabs and strapping it.

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

There are so many modules... I had a problem with my factory premium audio... at least I think that's what it was, but I said heck with it, I bought a 4.5 amp Battery Tender and I keep it connected. Bought a little Tupperware container to keep it in as the truck is outside. So the tender is water proofed. Doesn't matter how long it sits, batteries are always fully charged.

 

[chicaria]

All doors were closed and everything in the cab was off when pulling the fuses. I'll give the modules time to go to sleep next chance I get....another day or two.

I disconnected the negative battery cable from the battery post. Took a circuit tester, touched the cable clamp with one lead and the other to the negative post. The tester lit up pretty good, indicating a parasitic drain.
I then took the multimeter and clamped the pos. lead of the multimeter to the neg. battery cable clamp and the neg. multimeter lead to the neg. battery post. The multimeter is one that automatically goes to the function and setting you need, in this case it went to amps / mili amps..

The battery charger I use automatically switches to a float charge when the battery is fully charged.
I have used this charger on many other batteries and they also topped out at 12.6 when fully charged.....according to the charger.

The truck is an 06 with a 5.7 Hemi engine that I bought new and never had this issue with it before.
The problem started last summer.

 

[RodeoRam]

In the not-too-distant past when voltage regulators were part of the alternator, if it was going bad, it would drain down a battery overnight, and the temporary solution was to disconnect the battery until you could replace the alternator. Now, aren't they part of the PCM or one of other myriad computers? Might they still cause this problem?

 

[chicaria]

Many thanks to all for the input. I'm still at square one. Thinking about giving up my first born and taking it to a dealer and let them have a look.

 

[Oliver Closehauf]

Ok so is this a problem after a couple days, or a week+? My owners manual says if you plan to let your truck sit you should pull fuse 18(?) (Check your owner's manual) as it will cut power to non essential systems.

 

[PRazzi]

Many other threads on battery drain, but thought I'd post to this one.

Saw a persistent battery drain several months ago on my 2020 Ram 1500 BigHorn. Would drop ~2v a day, so after only 3-4 days it would not have sufficient charge to start. Put in a new battery. Today, after 6 days of not driving, the battery is 4.5v. Mentioned to my wife and she comments that last night when coming home she saw the screen was on - I have the 12" LCD panel. Could it be that whenever anyone is nearby with a Bluetooth device that's paired to the truck, it tries to connect? Given that the truck is on my driveway, that's going to be pretty much any time I'm in the garage, or walking by to walk my dogs. Plus whenever my wife or son walk by the truck.

Could that be the problem? If it is, then the only way to resolve it would be to disable Bluetooth on the truck?