Some interior lights randomly turning on

[mguy13sport]

I am tracing down a parasitic draw on the Explorer which has progressed to draining the battery within 24 hours.. i noticed tonight that my lights were on inside the car. Not all lights just the speedo and some accent lights. I parked the car over 8 hours ago. Has anyone else had this happen? I got a multimeter and I plan to monitor the draw and start pulling fuses to narrow it down. The battery is brand new (already reset BCM)

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ibb.co

Also the only way to get the lights to turn off is to turn on accessory mode and then turn it off. Opening/closing/locking door has no change.

 

[J_C]

I'd wonder if you have a bad door or liftgate latch switch, or if any of them are misaligned or warped and not fully closing. You can test the latter by opening the doors and liftgate and manually flipping the latch catch closed - just don't forget to undo that before trying to close them later. It will take time for the vehicle countdown timer to time out to the vehicle's lowest power *sleep* state, maybe 30 minutes or longer till it drops into its lowest power state of only tens of mA current. It could easily be 200mA or more till the timer finishes, even with nothing wrong. I'd wait an hour to then measure current at the fuse box, with at least the driver's door latch manually closed with the door open as mentioned above, since opening the door to get in and measure will reset the countdown timer.

I'd also wonder about a stuck relay and try swapping some of those around. I don't know if pulling fuses will really help much in this case because you already know the subsystem staying powered, just not why it's staying powered.

You can measure current across the fuses without having to remove them, if you are limber enough to get into position to access the fuse box with multimeter probes. There are several resources showing this method, for example:

automotive fuse drop current measurement - Google Search

However, this method depends on having the OEM or major brand fuses installed, as generic aftermarket fuses can have wildly loose (high trip point) tolerances and measure lower than actual current flow using the voltage drop method.

 

[peterk9]

I am tracing down a parasitic draw on the Explorer which has progressed to draining the battery within 24 hours.. i noticed tonight that my lights were on inside the car. Not all lights just the speedo and some accent lights. I parked the car over 8 hours ago. Has anyone else had this happen? I got a multimeter and I plan to monitor the draw and start pulling fuses to narrow it down. The battery is brand new (already reset BCM)


Also the only way to get the lights to turn off is to turn on accessory mode and then turn it off. Opening/closing/locking door has no change.

There is definitely something wrong here as the Battery Power Saver feature should have turned OFF those lights after 10 minutes if they were ON.
I believe the only lights it doesn't turn OFF are the parking lights. Good luck.

Peter