Parasitic battery drain??

[JamesV70Volvo]

Hi,

I am in need of the help and advice of the auto electrical gurus on this site.

Our 1999 Volvo S70 n/a 2.5 is experiencing some serious problems so far as maintaining a charge in the battery, which is only 3 months old.

If the car has been used, for example to cover a 50 mile round trip and then sits on the drive for 2 days, the battery will discharge, where it will not have enough power to start the car when it is next needed.

The car was sent to the local garage who carry out all of the servicing and they could not find a problem; they resorted to an auto electrical engineer taking a look and his summary was that all doors needed to be shut with more force, in order to cancel, or turn the door courtesy lights off.

This worked for a short time, or at least so it seemed, but that time also coincided with the car being used more often.

To further test the theory that the battery drain was coming about by the courtesy lights not extinguishing, I removed the no' 15 10 amp fuse, which disabled all of the courtesy lights, door, seat belt, boot and wherever else and still the same problem of a dead battery the next morning.

Today the car has been taken to an auto electrical specialist in town who has had the ammeter on the car all day to try and detect the cause of the drain and all that the battery has lost over 7 hours is 0.014 amps(?), he is not sure why the battery should be discharging in this way.

We are at our wits end and completely fed up with jump starting the car every time we want to use it, which coincidentally, starts first time and with no effort at all, when connected to my running Berlingo van battery with my jump leads.

Would some kind person or persons please suggest where, or what should we be looking at in order to resolve this problem, it cannot be as simple as saying that no cause for this can be found and therefore you have to junk the car??

If there is anyone out there who can help, or suggest a company who may be able to help, then please be kind enough to share, I have no problem travelling to get this resolved.

We are in the Bury St Edmunds are in Suffolk.

With many thanks in anticipation.

James - a very frustrated Volvo owner.

[volvo again]

Usual cause for courtesy/door marker lights staying on are the micro switches in the door locks...

[volvo321GO]

Second that!

[RaelG]

On my old 850 the glovebox light was staying on due to the lid not shutting quite right. Could be worth a look.

[Bob Meadows]

I had a very similar problem on my ’88 240:~ the central locking loom attached to the door lock barrel had frayed wires (not unknown for the 240 cars)
Not a great help for the V70 though! However I also have the ’97 V70 that had a battery drain or I think it had as the same seemed to run low at times- The alarm box battery had leaked so this is now disconnected (central locking still ok) I had suspicions that the driver’s door lock had a problem and although checked out I couldn’t see anything obvious.

I resolved the issue by fitting a battery isolation switch just in front of the same-some battery cable changes made etc.- The car is locked as normal with the remote but the bonnet lever is pulled open just prior to this, the battery switch is then turned off isolating all the electrics- close the bonnet. This works fine for me and the same switch is fitted to my three classics etc. and useful as the car doesn’t do a lot of mileage- normal journeys the switch is left on etc.
Difficult to trace these problems but the forum has further advice regarding the removal of various fuses as you do a series of elimination tests-Hope it helps.
Bob.

[Clan]

Originally Posted by JamesV70Volvo

Hi,

I am in need of the help and advice of the auto electrical gurus on this site.

Our 1999 Volvo S70 n/a 2.5 is experiencing some serious problems so far as maintaining a charge in the battery, which is only 3 months old.

If the car has been used, for example to cover a 50 mile round trip and then sits on the drive for 2 days, the battery will discharge, where it will not have enough power to start the car when it is next needed.

The car was sent to the local garage who carry out all of the servicing and they could not find a problem; they resorted to an auto electrical engineer taking a look and his summary was that all doors needed to be shut with more force, in order to cancel, or turn the door courtesy lights off.

This worked for a short time, or at least so it seemed, but that time also coincided with the car being used more often.

To further test the theory that the battery drain was coming about by the courtesy lights not extinguishing, I removed the no' 15 10 amp fuse, which disabled all of the courtesy lights, door, seat belt, boot and wherever else and still the same problem of a dead battery the next morning.

Today the car has been taken to an auto electrical specialist in town who has had the ammeter on the car all day to try and detect the cause of the drain and all that the battery has lost over 7 hours is 0.014 amps(?), he is not sure why the battery should be discharging in this way.

We are at our wits end and completely fed up with jump starting the car every time we want to use it, which coincidentally, starts first time and with no effort at all, when connected to my running Berlingo van battery with my jump leads.

Would some kind person or persons please suggest where, or what should we be looking at in order to resolve this problem, it cannot be as simple as saying that no cause for this can be found and therefore you have to junk the car??

If there is anyone out there who can help, or suggest a company who may be able to help, then please be kind enough to share, I have no problem travelling to get this resolved.

We are in the Bury St Edmunds are in Suffolk.

With many thanks in anticipation.

James - a very frustrated Volvo owner.

the crucial question is how many milliamps are flowing from the battery when the car is locked and alarm on ? 10 to 50 ma is fine over 100ma isn't