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Help or ideas for battery drain

25K views 25 replies 9 participants last post by  Moonracer 
#1 ·
I just got off the phone with SAAB Tech line and as usual they were very little help. I have a 99-9-5 in my shop that the battery goes bone dead in overnight every once in a while. We were doing our checks and found 250+ Mill amps curent draw. I replaced the Dice unit and after 25min. current draw is at 8 mil amps. Car stared every day since Thursday and was driven untill warm. I went out to start it today and the battery was bone dead, I jump startd it and it fired right off. I charged the battery and chcked for draw and again it's at 8-9 mil amps. SAAB says I have to catch it doing it to figure out whats causing it which I know. Has anyone had or heard of this before so I can at least start somewhere. There are only about 25 things that send a signal to Dice to turn on. Thanks in advance.
 
#2 ·
Well what continues to draw current after the car is shut off besides anything tied into the security system. Find whatever is drawing current through the fuse panel with the car off and I would assume that would show where the problem is. What about all the grounds.

Other guess would be to check the battery and the charging system.

I'm sure you've checked all of this but I've never run into problems like this so I wouldn't know what else to suggest besides the obvious.
 
#4 ·
It has a new battery in it. We have checked by pulling fuses. The only system that stays powered up is the Dice untill it has time to shut down which is the 25 min. wait. I have my dvm on it right now and it's reading 8 mil amps which is very low current draw. What ever it is is turning on randomly. The car has ben parked with the doors unlocked since we started dealing with it to eliminate the alarm system.
 
#11 ·
Hey what about an intermitant voltage regulator. So lets say for 90% of the time its working properly and everything is charging properly but that 10% it doesn't the battery is drained enough to the point that sitting overnight the TWICE system kills the rest of it?
 
#14 ·
Which ECU though there are only about 25 differant things that could ask for current. The bus system on the car kind of incorperates everything into one circuit. I've watched for all the outputs from Dice and nothing has been caught working when it shouldn't. I've kind of elininated it to an input but have no clue where to start. According to the wire diagram it could be anything from the audio system to acc and everything in between :(
 
#19 ·
I remembered some people were having problems with battery drains because some how the trunk light got left on.

Just an idea.
 
#22 ·
Well after a full day of chasing I think I'm getting it narrowed down. By a fluke of luck I was looking at my DVM and it went from .12 mil amp to 0 and I heard the fuse pop in the meter. I put a new fuse in and started checking again and the draw was huge 2-5 amps. I started pulling fuses again and pulled the fuse for the rear window defroster and the draw was gone. I then unhooked the ACC panel to eliminate the switch for the defroster and the draw stayed the same. Not untill I removed the relay did the draw drop. I was going to check the wire from Dice to the relay and when I unplugged the Dice unit the draw went away I hooked it back up and haven't been able to get it to return. Something is causing the relay to pull down, but it can't hardly be the Dice as this is the second new one in the car and they don't fail that often to get 2 bad new units from SAAB
 
#25 ·
here's another "victim"

Hi guys,

I've been seeing the same phenomenon with my 2003 9-5 since Winter (albeit a CA Winter), my mechanic hasn't been able to root-cause it yet :-(
So far, we've replaced the battery and starter, both needed it anyway (or so I'm told)...

If any more information has come up which for some reason hasn't made it into this thread yet, I'm all ears ;-)

TIA
 
#26 ·
On the car I was working on it turned out to be the ACC panel faulty. I unplugged the relay that was getting the signal from ACC and the battery has not drained yet on this car.

Good luck on finding your problem, I know this one kicked my ass for a long time.
 
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