one, two, three, four! rev up your engines! it's time for the scotty kilmer channel if you find that your car battery goes dead if it sits for a few days and won't start,then there's something draining your car battery, and you need to find out what it,is so today i'm going to show you how to check a battery drain in a late-modelcar, now it used to be that you could check for battery drains it was a simpletest light like this. you just get a wrench and take off the negative batteryterminal, then pull the terminal off, and hook
one end of the test light to theterminal, and plug the other one into the battery, and if the test light came onlike this, it would mean something's draining the battery, but you can't dothis test on a modern day car, because they have so many computer and sensordrains, that they always use a little electricity, so you have to be moreaccurate, like this, you need to make yourself a little test device with twoclamps, and a resistor in the middle, i bought this resistor at radio shack fortwo bucks, it's a 1 ohm 10 watt resistor you just connect it between two wires,then you connect one end to the negative terminal, and the other end to thebattery terminal, that way this new test
circuit connects it, and you can check,then you get a voltmeter and you connect it on each side, one goes on one side,and one goes on the other, then we read the voltmeter, in this case it's betweenabout four, about eight, or nine millivolts,now that's perfectly fine for a late model car, most will allow up to 35millivolt drain, that's normal, but if you have a lot like this, if you have a drainthis high, which is three point 6 volts, then you've got a serious drain, and youhave to find out where it is, well then you go to the fuse box and start pullingfuses and watch the gauge, pull the fuse out one at a time, and watch the gauge,when it goes back to the original small
drainage you had, then you know youfound where the problem is, well in this case, the fuse runs the overhead light,and some knucklehead left it on, so this is a real easy fix,we're just turn to switch off, now in most cases it's a lot harder finding thedrain than turning off a switch on an overhead light,but as long as you have a voltmeter and this little test wire, you can find anyelectrical drain, just remember you need to use a 1 ohm 10 watt resistor, andrealize that 35 to 45 millivolts is a normal drain for a modern car, but yourcar may be different, so check with a mechanic to see what the normal drain isfor your car, some late-model mercedes
have a much higher drain that's normal,so you have to find out if you're not sure what yours is,so don't let battery drain get you down fix it yourself, and remember if you'vegot any car questions just visit scotty kilmer .com and i'll answer them as soonas i get back from this ride!
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