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Digging into the, what seems to be excessive, draw of The Beast's electrical system.
It appears to have been a decision on the part of Holden or GM engineers that the body control module never quite goes to sleep.
It stays more awake than the Australian version of the car to make sure that essential police equipment gets a trickle of power and to decide how much.
This amounts to about 0.4 amps. Which is a lot for a car that's shut off.
The "problem" area is the extra fuse box under the driver's kick-panel. This is where the fuses for all the Americanizations live.
But, the GM engineers reason, cop cars are constantly in use, the extra draw just won't come up!
And knowing about the draw being normal means I need to start the damn thing at least once a week when the battery is connected or keep a charger on it.
PS: Don't feel too smug about your own car shutting further down than mine, OnStar is calling home every few hours and transmitting. The dear, departed, Precious would drain the battery sitting idle too.
I figured out why the Sikverado was having battery issues (I think).
ReplyDeleteIt has to do with the CD eject cycling on it's own trying to eject a nonexistent CD. That CD eject problem is a Chevy thing....
So I just put in an old CD and haven't had any problems since.
Also, a NOCO jump starter is handy and will start anything (except an LS tractor) with a battery that's not completely dead.
Almost 1/2 amp draw seems awfully high, even for all the dormant CPU's that require some power to keep things in memory. Are you sure the courtesy light inside your glove box is not remaining on? Or the one in the boot (trunk)?
ReplyDeleteOver the years I have run into both simply due to interrupt button switches that get out of adjustment or damaged and do not turn off the one bulb when the access doors close. Oh, and the silly light for the vanity mirror in the windshield shades (assuming yours has them), my wife kept not sliding the mirror protector shut all the way and that left the lights on. And so it goes.
I will admit that I have not actually measured the draw, I've just been told.
DeleteThe boot light is shutting off, I had it open with the charger on the battery back there, so I could observe it.
Something I noticed when I put LED bulbs in is that they all glow very slightly. The system runs a small amount of current all the time. I am told that a normal Holden doesn't do this, and the US cop car does.