Hey guys, having a problem with my truck. The battery keeps draining, i have to jump start the truck everyday and it will last me the whole day, but the next day I have to do it all over again. Took it to advance to do the battery test/alternator test and "supposedly" everything checked out. Here is the pic. what do i check now?

 

You sure you're not leaving anything on?

I would just get a new battery anyways, sometimes they check out normal in the nice warm bench test, but out in the cold winter environment they don't like to work....

It could also be that your starter is going bad, or that you have a bad ground somewhere....

You should check the voltage at your cig. lighters with the truck off... one should be 12V+ all the time, the other should read zero when the truck is off...

 

I'm sure, besides the alarm. Could that have anything to do with that?

 

U need to get a good meter and do a parasitic load test anything over 0050ma will drain your battery down if not driven enough . Also u might have to wait up to a hour for everything to time out.

 

How old is the battery? You may have a weak/bad cell which isnt exactly enough to fail on the bench test..

My truck battery lasts 3 weeks when it sits and after that it wont start.
My parasitic drain constantly fluctuates between 0.076-0.096mA which is high. The culprit...my bypass module for my remote starter!

 

The battery is from 11, maybe it is too old. I just bought a multimeter but I'm not sure if its the right one.

 

You need to do a key off draw test. Set you meter to current, 200mA range, about the 8 o clock position on your meter in the pic.

Remove the negative battery cable, run the meter in line of the cable, put one lead on the battery post and the other on the battery cable. Watch the meter for about 5 minutes, for the first minute or so the reading will be higher due to the fact that you disconnected the battery and the PCM is charging its caps.

According to Alldata, up to 200mA is acceptable by dodge's standards for a key off draw. With a good battery that amount shouldnt be a problem, 200mA means it will draw one amp in 5 hours.

 

This is very good advice, just don't ground yourself on the car or else it might Zero out and you'll wonder what is going on... I suggest that you use Alligator Clamps to do this.

I remember not being able to find something b/c I was grounding myself to the chassis by accident while trying to hold the test probes to the wiring.

Really drove me nuts, until our senior tech came over and handed me alligator clips for my meter... He gave me crap about it for a week... lol

Hope you're able to find the issue.

 

Yes, having an array of test leads and a good meter always comes in pretty handy. You can always get real fancy like me and splurge on the amp clamp attachment lol. Then you dont even need to disconnect the battery.

 

Thanks for the solid advice guys, however I think I the battery was the problem, I was getting the battery tested @ advanced, the battery is an autocraft gold, and they kept telling me that the battery was good and that it was charging well, so out of embarrassment, cause they had charged 4 times before, I went to autozone and within 10 min i get a call back that I have a bad cell. I go back to advance a little pissed, get a new battery which I haven't hooked up yet, I'm still going to do the drain test to see what i get. Thanks everyone, I'll update once I know something.