04 Ex battery dead again

[tperez715]

This first happened in June of this year... went to start Ex and battery was completely drained. charged battery up and started fine.. used the truck for a few days with no issues but as soon as a day or two went by without driving it the battery was dead again. This went on for a few weeks. after some research we assumed that the altenator was bad so we put a brand new one in and the issue seemed to go away. The new altenator has been in for about 3 weeks with no problems until last night. when making sure the alarm was on the horn sounded very weak and sure enough the battery is dead again after not driving for 2 days. any ideas what else could be causing the issue?

 

[chopperb]

Maybe the battery is bad. How old is it?

 

[n2audio]

sounds like you have something drawing a higher than usual amount of current when the engine is off.

 

[tperez715]

The batter is only about 3 months old.. if that! and the altenator was put in the weekend of the 4h of July... only thing that is new on the truck is an amp and box we bought off someone in June... my husband is going to put our old one in today to see if it still happens.... what would be the most common things to drain it if its not the box and amp?

 

[ronwc]

draw

Any small light can draw a battery down over a few days. Go out on a dark night, don't turn off alarm or open doors. Walk around and check all out, dome lights, glove box light, under hood light, ect

 

[imp]

The batter is only about 3 months old.. if that! and the altenator was put in the weekend of the 4h of July... only thing that is new on the truck is an amp and box we bought off someone in June... my husband is going to put our old one in today to see if it still happens.... what would be the most common things to drain it if its not the box and amp?

To drain a fully-charged battery in a day or two, the current draw must be fairly high. The trouble started when the amp was installed, yes? Disconnect the amp entirely, and see if the battery drains down still. My bet is, that's the cause of the issue.

The idea of checking for a light on somewhere is also a good one. However, at least on my '04, the courtesy lights (and maybe manually-operated ones also) are turned of automatically, if a door is left ajar, for example, after about 10 minutes. That's a good feature I don't know when it appeared, year-wise. imp

 

[mikeinri]

Sounds like an intermittent drain. Could be as simple as a brake light switch starting to fail. These are the worst things to deal with. Time consuming and frustrating are the nicest words I can think of...

Mike

 

[imp]

Sounds like an intermittent drain. Could be as simple as a brake light switch starting to fail. These are the worst things to deal with. Time consuming and frustrating are the nicest words I can think of...

Mike

Intermittent problems are of course the most difficult to resolve. If worst comes to worst, disconnect the entire fuse box from the battery feed, then re-connect as though judicious until the offending current drain is located. imp

 

[Trw222]

Follow up

Did you ever find out what was draining power from your battery. We are experiencing the same thing. No lights or obvious power draws. Thanks