Hello,
I work in automotive. It is getting very hard to diagnose an intermittently dead battery.
Sometimes there are very small short circuits or switch problems that cause a small parasitic draw of lets say 100-200 mA. Its the fact that they are intermittent that is a problem.
Sometimes a module has a bad input that causes it to wake up repeatedly or to wake the others and this can cause battery drain.
In most all cases there is no diagnostic information stored. Zero.
And if the problem is intermittent there is no cost effective repair. Nothing to check test or inspect except the entire car. For a problem that is not even there.
I am wondering if I could make a small device to record an indication of current flow and put it inline with a fuse or a ground connection or connector so that there is a smoking gun vaguely in the direction of the problem.
Whole cars are sometimes bought back by the manufacturer because of this issue. Othertimes a $5000 vehicle wide wiring harness is replaced and may or may not fix it.
Meanwhile, the car is useless. Who knows if it will start? Only a manual battery disconnect and reconnect every day could work around that. Even in that case, a lot of unwanted things can happen as a result of losing battery voltage...
I work in automotive. It is getting very hard to diagnose an intermittently dead battery.
Sometimes there are very small short circuits or switch problems that cause a small parasitic draw of lets say 100-200 mA. Its the fact that they are intermittent that is a problem.
Sometimes a module has a bad input that causes it to wake up repeatedly or to wake the others and this can cause battery drain.
In most all cases there is no diagnostic information stored. Zero.
And if the problem is intermittent there is no cost effective repair. Nothing to check test or inspect except the entire car. For a problem that is not even there.
I am wondering if I could make a small device to record an indication of current flow and put it inline with a fuse or a ground connection or connector so that there is a smoking gun vaguely in the direction of the problem.
Whole cars are sometimes bought back by the manufacturer because of this issue. Othertimes a $5000 vehicle wide wiring harness is replaced and may or may not fix it.
Meanwhile, the car is useless. Who knows if it will start? Only a manual battery disconnect and reconnect every day could work around that. Even in that case, a lot of unwanted things can happen as a result of losing battery voltage...