Parasitic load on battery

[joshuabardwell]

You are not looking for a short, you are looking for an approximately 100 ohm resistance to pull the 120ma. load. This load would not even begin to drop any voltage anywhere on any of the other circuits, you would not notice it at all. But in 2 weeks, it could drain your battery.

I thought you went to bed!

I was thinking about a short because I have heard about parasitic drain being caused by insulation being rubbed off the wire and it contacting a ground point. But I think your point is that if it was a dead short, I would see a lot more than 120 mA.

I also have a confession to make. I just came in from the barn where I did some poking around, and it appears that when I wrote the original post for this thread, I mis-remembered the reading by one decimal point, and from that point on, even when I was looking right at the multimeter, I saw what I "knew" instead of what I was actually seeing. In other words, the actual reading is 0.012 amps, not 0.12 amps. I finally figured that out when I thought, "120 mA? I should really be using the mA setting instead of the 10A setting on the multimeter." That big fat decimal point staring me right in the face knocked the sense into me.

Oh, and the cherry on top? On the more sensitive mA setting, the reading is actually about 1.4 mA. It must have been reading 12 mA on the 10A setting just because it lacks sufficient precision in that range. Soo.... Yeah. Thanks for the education, and I won't call it "wasting your time," because the next time I have to troubleshoot an ACTUAL parasitic load, this will have been helpful. But... Whoops.

That still leaves as a mystery how the battery died in the first place. The only thing that operates when the key is out is the turn signals, and my first thought was that maybe my son somehow got in and out of the barn without me noticing and left the turn signal on. But we're in the barn all the time, and there's no way we wouldn't have noticed, especially at night, when it would have been a beacon in the dark. I really have no idea.

[cyrush]

With alternator disconnected and parasitic loss still there, rules out the alternator.

A short in the harness would be an instant loss of power and a fire!! So a low parasitic loss means some sort of equipment with a control box or similar is loosing the power!!

I don't know enough of the intricacies of your Bobcat to be able to specify further, sorry.???

[chipsndust]

Does your machine have an hourmeter?
Could that be where the juice is going?

[k0ua]

Alrighty then!... 1.4 milliamps.. not enough to worry about... I am thinking your battery may be on its last legs. It's all good, no harm done, in my trying to think though possible failure scenarios and you trying to follow thru on the diagnosis.. I don't consider it a waste of time.. Take care

James K0UA

[SSdoxie]

Joshua,
After reading this early this morning, before sun cam I got to thinking about it. Only other place I could think of for possible parastic draw would be stater solenoid. Later on I went and checked mine. My tractor was showing .015. I took the positive cable off the starter solenoid, checked there & no reading but hen touched lead from to the solenoid output to stater and had the same .015 reading. My tractor has wet for 4 - 6 weeks at a time without running it and have no battery problems. I did have anew battery installed when I bought it from Knoxville because it had be setting on their lot for close to 2 years and needed a boost when they went to get it ready for me so I had them install a new battery then.

Might want to give Bobcat of Knoxville a call and see if they have one of the field trucks coming in your dircetion in next few days and ask them to stop and check out your battery. If it is going bad, your warranty will replace it 100% with no pro-rate within the first year.

[joshuabardwell]

Might want to give Bobcat of Knoxville a call and see if they have one of the field trucks coming in your dircetion in next few days and ask them to stop and check out your battery. If it is going bad, your warranty will replace it 100% with no pro-rate within the first year.

Thanks, Dennis. I was just starting to ponder whether this was a warranty issue. I'm 99% sure I didn't leave anything on or anything to cause a discharge being my fault. And now I have ruled out parasitic load too. So my best guess is that the battery was old from sitting on the lot, and the couple nights of hard freeze that we had kind of did it in. Currently, it has been on the trickle charger for a couple of days and it's still not going into float mode. It shows 12.4 volts under load (my multimeter has a load test function), which... well, it sure ain't dead, but it ain't taking a full charge either.

[SSdoxie]

Battery is warranty for 2 years. 1st year is full replacement, then it pro-rates in the second year. Dealer does have to do a load test but also has to check and verify charging & starting system before he can file warranty on a battery. Make sure you take the charger off at least 1/2 hour before load tests are doen on the battery.
At 12.4v and you haven't been runnig it, I would say battery is bad. Mine tested at 12.7v this morning after doing the draw tests on it. I did run it for an hour yesterday.

[sparc]

I found oit the hard way that my TC25s dash lights are not switched through the ignition switch. My neighbor happened to notice one evening after it got dark a glow on the dash. He called me and I went over to check it out. Found the switch on the dash turned on, the headlights were off because the ignition was off but as soon as i turned the switch to the on position the headlights came on. I must have accidently hit the switch during the day and could not see it in the daylight. Those two dash lamps would have put a slow drain on the battery.

[joshuabardwell]

Just wanted to give y'all an update. After figuring out that there wasn't much of a parasitic load, I hooked the negative lead back up again. I left the battery on the charger and went on a one-day business trip that turned into a three-day business trip. By the time I got back late last night, the charger showed green again. Now, I know it'll normally get a car battery back into shipshape faster than that, but if it's reached float, I think I'm going to probably have a hard time making a warranty claim against it. It'll probably test good when the truck gets here. So I think I'm going to just let it be for now, and maybe get into the habit of putting the battery on the charger when I'm not using the tractor.

[k0ua]

Just wanted to give y'all an update. After figuring out that there wasn't much of a parasitic load, I hooked the negative lead back up again. I left the battery on the charger and went on a one-day business trip that turned into a three-day business trip. By the time I got back late last night, the charger showed green again. Now, I know it'll normally get a car battery back into shipshape faster than that, but if it's reached float, I think I'm going to probably have a hard time making a warranty claim against it. It'll probably test good when the truck gets here. So I think I'm going to just let it be for now, and maybe get into the habit of putting the battery on the charger when I'm not using the tractor.

My guess is your battery, as you suspect is not up to snuff... One of those solar chargers can be a good investment, and just leave it on all the time.. I have one on the lawn mower.. all the time it is not mowing.. seems to solve the problem.