Still trying to figure out why my car won't start after it sits for a few days.
I have a video here
I'm not sure if this current draw is enough to kill the battery... not sure why it starts high and then slowly goes down (it would go down to zero if I waited long enough).
The second part is another car I have. It has the same behavior... except it starts very high and then quickly goes down to zero.
I've tried this on two different multimeters and it's the same behavior on both.
So what causes this?
Is this normal?
Is that enough amp draw in the first video to make a battery die after a few days?
You can use a hose clamp around the terminal to hold the multimeter lead if you are doing long term testing. The reason it jumps up is because when you first add power anything that uses constant memory power will charge up capacitors and things like that. Once all of that is charged up then you will see what the actual draw is. Like Indy said, hook up the meter first.. I would wait a few seconds to allow everything to stabilize before turning it on.
.15 amps is a really low draw. It would take significant time for that to drain your battery. Typical stock battery has about 450-600 CCA. It would take quite a long time to bring that down.
So it turns out that it likely isn't the battery at all.
Did the draw test, made sure the battery was good, took it up to the local AutoZone to test as well just to make sure my Sun reader was correct and it was.
Went to turn over the car to test alternator output and it wouldn't start!
So I knew it wasn't the battery at that point.
My first thought was the safety clutch switch or the solenoid. Since it's so easy to check the solenoid on these cars I did that and I'm thinking I FINALLY found it.
First couple tries jumping the solenoid and it wouldn't turn over. Just clicked a few times. Then after the third try it finally cranked.
It's the original solenoid so I'm guessing it just finally gave up the ghost.
Fortunately found a Motorcraft replacement. I was surprised I could find one and that it wasn't 150 bucks or something from someone's stash
If so, then the starter could not be the issue, as it receives load power from the solenoid, unlike the newer style that gets control power to hot solenoid on the starter itself.
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