I bought my '11 GS last Labor Day and on the first weekend home the battery died. I posted my issue and learned a bit from fellow forum members and also how the car's electrical system powers down. I still wondered why my battery died and I think I finally figured it out. Boils down to "Operator Error". What I think I did was push in the instrument panel dimmer switch on the lower left side of the dash panel. I'm sure I was playing with all the ***** and switches but at the end of the day I never noticed the button was pushed in and the lights stayed on after exiting the vehicle. I've also noticed that the Start Button stays lit green too when the foot well lights are left on. Thankfully I caught it this time (lights had been on for about 10 hours) before killing the battery. Hope this keeps somebody out of trouble.
-Chris

 

 

I believe the interior lights will shut off, even if you leave them turned on, after about 10-15mins?? I could be wrong, but I know when I'm working on the car, I always find them off and have to close/open the door again to get them back on...

 

Yes, you could always just hit the **** on the dash an/off maybe instead of the door?


From the 2012 manual:

Battery Power Protection
This vehicle has a feature to help
prevent the battery from being
drained in case any of the following
lamps are left on: the underhood
lamp, if your vehicle has this
feature, vanity mirror lamps,
cargo lamps, reading lamps, center
console, or glove box lamps. If any
of these lamps are left on, they will
automatically time-out after about
10 minutes. To reset it, all of the
above lamps must be turned off or
the ignition key on.

Exterior Lighting Battery
Saver
If the manual parking lamps or
headlamps have been left on,
the exterior lamps will turn off as
soon as the ignition is turned off or
Retained Accessory Power (RAP)
is active. This protects against
draining the battery in case you
have accidentally left the headlamps
or parking lamps on. The battery
saver does not work if the
headlamps are turned on after the
ignition switch is turned to off.
If you need to leave the lamps on,
use the exterior lamp control to turn
the lamps back on.

 

See my other post above, I dont think that was the issue. Is it possible the ignition was left on, maybe fob still in car?

 

The one thing that the RAP feature does not cover is the map light when turned on by pressing the rotary switch on the lower left panel close out. You aren't the first to be bitten by this bug and most certainly won't be the last - but you did indeed diagnose the problem correctly!

 

Thanks for the replies. Yes the interior lights and panel lights do go out, but the footwells stay on. I only noticed it because I was standing behind the car in my garage a while after I got home and looking through the rear window noticed the ignition button was lit green. I knew my keyfob was in the house so I started investigating. Like a lot of people I thought the power saver shut everything off. We have a Mercedes ML320 with the same feature but I have had a dead battery with that vehicle too.
Cheers, this case is closed!
Chris

 

Once you get in the habit of making sure all the lights and the car are truly off then you won't have battery issues. It is easy to leave the ignition on as well which will also drain the battery even though the car goes into power saver mode. Had this happen with my 08Z. Put it on the trailer and then tied it down. Got back into the car to roll up the windows and forgot to turn the ignition off after they were up. Several hours later and at home a woman knocks on the front door and says the car on the trailer has its back up lights on. When I got in the car the DIC had Battery Saver Mode displayed but the lights were still on.

Bill

 

I have read so many posts already regarding C6 Battery issues, but it seems that now I am suffering from this.
I just bought a 2005 Z51 about two months ago. After about two months of perfect performance with intermittent use, my battery was completely dead one morning (had sat for 4 days). We had just gone on a 2 day road trip with no problems before parking it. I replaced the battery with a brand new Duralast Gold from Autozone, and the car fired right up and everything worked well. I also checked for anyting that I could have left on, but found no problems. All looked well and I beleived I had corrected the problem with the new battery. Went on vacation for a few days (in another car). Of course when I got home the first thing that I wanted to do was hop in the vette and go for a quick ride. Well, completely dead again. Very frustrating, now I have killed a brand new battery and it wont even take a charge. Here is what I have done to the car since I had it prior to the batter problem popping up.
Keep in mind I had no problems for two months.

-Replaced driver side sun visor (ouch$$) because the vanity mirror cover was broken- I don't think this caused any problems as the car worked great, even after sitting for days several weeks after doing this.

-Attempted to program a new key fob that I bought from Chevy-Could never get the DIC to go into program mode by turning the key, and tried dozens of times (I pulled the inner truck trim back and looked at the latch, disconnected the connector off the latch and reinstalled, but could never get into programming. Put it all back together and gave up.

-Here's the only think that occurred right before the problem. On the road trip I mentioned I had plenty of time on my hands so I thought I would press the on-star button and get my 90 day free trial. So I set it up over the air and also had some cell minutes added to it. It worked fine for the trip. Could anything about the ON-Star transmitter/reciever be draining the battery down so soon?

I am completely confused. I can take the battery back for a free replacement but I am sure that the store will not keep giving me an unending supply.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks! Jim

Jim

 

Sorry to hear of your problems Jim. If you can, get a digital multimeter with the capability to read DC amps and put it in line with the Positive battery terminal and cable. I don't have my readings on hand but did put them in a previous post if it is still available on the Forum. Bottom line is that about five minutes or so after shutting the car down the current drain on the battery should be milliamps. It will drop from about 5 to 3 then .8 to .13 (or so). I'm sure somebody will correct me but I think I am close. If it does not then you need to troubleshoot. Obviously no lights should be on and if you have a manual I believe it must be in Reverse. I've also read that the OnStar may fire up on it's own to contact "homebase" which can cause some drain from time to time. You could pull the fuse for OnStar but somebody here said it kills the voice on the Nav if you have that. Bottom line is I think you need to do the multimeter test to see what's going on with the battery. Good luck!
-Chris

 

Chris,
Thanks again for your reply and PM.
Here is what has occurred if anyone else is following this saga.
I plan on double checking the battery (again) and troubleshooting with a meter per Chris's suggestion.
Thanks!

After the brand new battery died in 1-2 days, I purchased a pretty nice battery charger (slow/fast/maintain/jump) and put the "new" dead battery on charge overnight on full charge.
The battery (per the charger) would only charge to what it read as 45% and about 12.8 volts. The next day, I turned off the charger, turned it back on, and then that day the battery did charge all the way.
I disconnected and went to start the car, but it would not crank. DIC reads about 12.4 volts. I had full power to the car, lights, radio, gauges swept, etc. But it would not crank. No clicking, just nothing. I then got a check engine light.
No matter what I did (shifter,switch) I could not get it to tell the starter to turn. I disconnected the neg battery cable and reconnected, and it started. Tried it a few more times and would not fail. DIC was reading 14.6 volts when the alternator was spinning. I then couldn't figure out why my top wouldnt go down, so I jumped on the awesome Corvette Forum and realized I had to index my power windows. Did that and went for about a 20 minute aggressive ride. Parked it in the garage overnight, (no charger). Did the same thing the next day, had to disconnect and reconnect battery. Drove for about twenty minutes, stopped at a gas station, would not crank. Finally got it to crank after about 5 on/off cycles with the start switch and moving shifter in and out of reverse. (Scary, thought I was going to have to lift my hood in front of all the kids with the badly painted Honda Civics...at least they could start their cars.)
I can't tell if I have another battery problem, a Steering Column Lock problem, as it has all the symptoms of that. I am aware that weak battery will give symptoms of a lot of problems, including SCL. I did drive the car over the weekend while I was out to the Autozone where I purchased the car. They put a large hand held tester on the battery for about 3 minutes and said it was discharging/charging correctly. I still wonder if activiting the On Star service while I was on the road trip right before this started is what started the battery drain. It is really the only thing that changed within two weeks prior to this happening. I need to disconnect it or something.

Today I am going to charge the battery again and see what happens, maybe pull the Onstar fuse or something. Very frustrating. I had the car for two monhs with absolutely no problems, so I don't think the dealer was aware of it, maybe just bad timing. Other than this (big thing), the car is absolutely awesome. This is just a little embarrasing with friends and family.