Club 80-90 Forums

Earth drain..is it normal that when i connect the battery with ignition off there is a small spark
so current is flowing ?

a small spark is not uncommoon it depends what you have wired in and how, stereos etc.. can often be wired from unswitched circuits and the door lights are permenantly live etc....use a ameter to check the current draw as you reconnect and see what it stabilises at, as often cd players run the motor momentarily when connected

ok thanks

you can pop the fuses in turn to see what is draining if it is on one of the standard van circuits.

well it seems to be 1 amp ...that alot?

T25DREAMER wrote:well it seems to be 1 amp ...that alot?

Yes. Way too much. Even a beefy battery will be pancaked in way less than a week - if that's accurate.

Pull all the fuses, reconnect the battery, then go over the fuse slots one-by-one with a multimeter to see which circuit's drawing what.

I suspect something awry with the reading, though, unless you've really got big problems, or it's a very short-term reading whilst stereo etc initialise themselves.

Make sure the interior lights are off.
I changed my battery recently, was quite surprised by the spark, untill I realised the sliding door was open and the courtesy lights were on

T

If i take out the 4 fuse from right it stops the drain
84 old type fuses

Fuse No. 9.....Hazzard lights and radio...

Thanks will have a look tomorow

kevtherev wrote:Fuse No. 9.....Hazzard lights and radio...

Place bets...

Yep I'll bet on that

I put a high tech new all singing, all dancing one in Gills Scirocco and it was just rubbish all round, so I got an 80's O.E. style Blaupunkt off a nice chap on here = MUCH better all round and no standby drain.

Yep your right a radio standby drain...it was
i rigged a switch to kill it when im not it the van

Of course now you will need to re-tune all your pre-set channels everytime you use the radio....
1 amp draw is way too much which indicates a fault on the radio and loosing the radios pre-sets is a pain...radio needs changing or repairing.

Martin