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OMG, is there an electrical engineer on this forum? Have a drain on my car but I cant seem to get a good reading. Multiple decent meters like fluke but I cant read the drain. I have a fluke dc clamp meter but its crazy. Says 1.43 ma on one scale .143A on another. Milli is 1000 hence 1.4ma is .0014a. Then I tried my flukes in series with the battery. No good. unless you hear the relays on the engine click in its a false reading. So I pulled the fuses one at a time and put them back, yes in the right place but now the a/c fan does not blow and the right window wont go down. Also an error on the DIC about the the steering column. Whats going on. Also the fuse labels are cryptic. How come it cant say 1-int lights.
To read amps you need a dmm in series with the battery. ie remove one battery cable connect one lead of the dmm to the cable. connect the other lead to the battery. put dmm in current mode. forget that clamp meter. get a dmm. oh and get those fuses back in the correct places.
In the future do one at a time. have all in. remove one. check reading. put back in. remove the next etc.
Yes. Your statement that you tried a fluke in series and you said "no good" means you didn't do it correctly. Its not possible to not debug this issue with a dmm. This is the only way to do it. And yes I am an electrical engineer.,
" Its not possible to not debug this issue with a dmm"
Sounds more like you are a lawyer with that double negative.
No way to screw up an in serires connection with a meter on current. Other then the meter does nor have a shunt bar. I think thats the only way to really get a good reading, ie shunt bar in series. I dont have one that will read ma, only amps. Like I said, if you dont hear the relays kick in, your meter is really not connected. Try it.
FWIW - If you do everything and still have a drain try this. I spent 3 days trying to pin down a drain with no luck. This was the culprit.
Check your dash dimmer switch and make sure it is not turned all the way to the right past a far-right click position. That will drain your battery if all the way to the right. I had this problem. A tech told me this makes the BCM think several switches are on and it continually sends power to them.
SEND a picture of the Digital Multimeter that you are using and the way you set it up to measure 0-10 AMPS. That's the only way that we are going to make sense on this issue because there are SOOOO MANY meters and each has it own set up.
Its not operator error, trust me, been doing this before digital meters were invented. Its the shunt in the meters I am sure. So I found a .6 ohm 10 watt ceramic resistor laying around the garage. Thats what a shut is in a meter basically. So I put it in series with the battery and measured the voltage across the resistor. the voltage was .25. Using ohms law I came up with .367mA. Thats close to 1/2 amp, too much. Most modern cars pull 60mA = .060
Billl do you have a c5 blower motor laying around. I would like to see what current other motors are pulling.
OMG, is there an electrical engineer on this forum? Have a drain on my car but I cant seem to get a good reading. Multiple decent meters like fluke but I cant read the drain. I have a fluke dc clamp meter but its crazy. Says 1.43 ma on one scale .143A on another. Milli is 1000 hence 1.4ma is .0014a. Then I tried my flukes in series with the battery. No good. unless you hear the relays on the engine click in its a false reading. So I pulled the fuses one at a time and put them back, yes in the right place but now the a/c fan does not blow and the right window wont go down. Also an error on the DIC about the the steering column. Whats going on. Also the fuse labels are cryptic. How come it cant say 1-int lights.
Could it be a bad battery? Internal short? That wouldn’t show up with the testing you’ve done.
Its not operator error, trust me, been doing this before digital meters were invented. Its the shunt in the meters I am sure. So I found a .6 ohm 10 watt ceramic resistor laying around the garage. Thats what a shut is in a meter basically. So I put it in series with the battery and measured the voltage across the resistor. the voltage was .25. Using ohms law I came up with .367mA. Thats close to 1/2 amp, too much. Most modern cars pull 60mA = .060
Billl do you have a c5 blower motor laying around. I would like to see what current other motors are pulling.
The normal DC Current Draw for most C5s is 20 - 25 Milliamps (0.020 - 0.025 amps)
did you buy and use this. looks like its in parallel with battery ie voltage not current
It's in parallel till you switch it. That's so the tool takes all the startup load which your meter fuse won't withstand. Then you switch after some stuff starts shutting down and you can check current, obviously, since that's what it's for. Yes I have one in my tool box.
Well, I made a similar device and used ohms law. 7 ohm resistor and .5 volts = 70 mA. From what I have read on the net 60 is typical in newer cars. 20mA seems low for a loaded vette.
09-22-2018, 06:49 PM
04' C5 whoes
