Flat battery why?????

[mozzer]

Ok so had new alternator and leads to battery replaced a few weeks ago and all running fine until a few days ago got in the van and the battery was dead....

so round to local garage and new battery fitted alternator was tested and said to be working fine....... anyway van ran fine for a day...... left it over night and flat battery again in the morning????? cant see anything thats left on or draining battery any ideas??? what problem could be??

[Aidan]

you need a multimeter to check things over yourself

get it started and check the voltage at the battery should be 13.7 in a perfect world with a good alternator

if that checks out then stop engine and disconnect the battery live and then try making the connection via the meter set to amps and see what current draw there is - if much more than 10mA then you want to find out where the current is going, remember to disable the door switched lights while you are checking

most current draw is stereo or alarm or tracker or the like, some stereos have a standby mode which uses a lot of power but they look like they are switched off and some bad ice installs will take a lot of power especially, flatten the battery in a matter of days

[Big Boris]

do you have a liesure battery ,and is this ok and not linked to your chargeing system and running your starter battery down ,i have a westy and this is what was happening to mine ,red westie sorted my prob by telling me to dissconect lesuire battery and replace relay behind drivers seat ,and buy anew lesuire battery obviously ,
hope this helps .

[mozzer]

After another trip to the garage and alternator swapped (at their expense) on its return i decided to check for any battery drain put a test light between live cable and live terminal and on went the light.............. had a look at all 12v gear on van then realised the fag lighter had been jammed in, pulled it out and no further drain took me 5 mins to fix...... will be round the garage in the morning asking for a refund on the unecassry work and new battery

[Red Westie]

The cigarette lighter would have been a considerable drain and should have been picked up pretty easily with a simple amp draw check. Obviously I am not sure just how you presented the fault, whether the battery was checked in a completely flat state where even a brand new one would fail.
A charge check would have just acknowledged that the alternater was OK but the presented symptoms (going flat overnight) absolutely begged for a discharge check to be carried out.
You deserve some compensation although I doubt you'll get total regress .

Martin