Battery drain and Radio clock stays on . | Page 2 | Ford Explorer Forums - Serious Explorations

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Battery drain and Radio clock stays on .

OK Battery and Alt are good ,I took radio out and found all wiring looks good ,I disconnected everything around radio as well and only left 4x4 switch hooked up and will see whats up from here on . 8 hrs and battery voltage is 12.7 and starts right up.
 



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not sure what you did to check wiring behind radio but if it is all good like you say then it sounds like an internal "short" of radio.
 






sounding like some strange brew in the radio.
 






OK Battery and Alt are good ,I took radio out and found all wiring looks good ,I disconnected everything around radio as well and only left 4x4 switch hooked up and will see whats up from here on . 8 hrs and battery voltage is 12.7 and starts right up.

Hi, My expi started showing exactly the same issue. Wanted to ask if your were able to pinpoint the issue? Any updates would be great.

Thanks
 






^ You probably have either sticking power saver or accessory delay relay, a bad ignition switch, a bad power saver trigger like a door latch, or the radio itself has a short.

I'd start by swapping the relays with known good ones to see if the measured power draw from the battery through fuse 29 changes (assuming yours also has the drain through #29 as his did), and if nothing changes, measure whether there is 12V on fuse #20 when the ignition off - there should be no power with it off. If there is no power, then I would begin to suspect the radio and unplug it.

If there is power on #20 fuse with ignition off, I'd look at any triggers to the GEM, and if none are triggering (closed circuit?) and the GEM is cycling the accessory relay on after a 45 minute inactivity period (including not opening the doors or reconnecting the battery) then I would start to suspect the GEM itself.

So yeah, there are multiple branches to troubleshoot this, depending on whether that fuse #20 is live when it shouldn't be, when the ignition is off. You can get the wiring diagrams from the link in my sig.

One option here is make friends with a local junkyard and promise them you'll buy "something" if you can try a few parts. Locate same year vehicle, pull the GEM, and the radio (they may have those inside on shelves instead of in the vehicles) and the two relays, and try all these parts while you're parked at the junkyard.

If there's any chance you have a wiring fault, especially if the vehicle has been in a flood or had an aftermarket alarm installed, or rodents chewing on insulation, whatever, then you're on your own to try to guess whether any wiring has been compromised, and use a multimeter to probe for voltage on the affected wires.

Edit: Just noticed that the only vehicle you have listed is a Expedition 2004, so some of the details above may be wrong. If you own an explorer then please list it in your vehicle info. If you do not, you should post your issue in the appropriate forum for a 2004 Expedition.
 






thanks for the revert and direction to in!. I do have an expedition, but the only result on google and other search engines list only this thread for this particular issue. The fuse numbers will be different of-course and I shall match them up with a friend 2005 explorer.

but really appreciate your response. i shall update as to what i find. The relay, however is working fine because I exchanged it with a known good one. So I move to the next steps over the coming weekends!
 






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