Volvo RWD 200 Forum

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Battery Discharging 200

I have a relatively new battery in the car, and its been noticably discharging over night. I checked with my multi meter. Measured current from Positive battery cable to Positive terminal, and it was about 200 milli amps. I isolated it to the fuse 5. Tried unpluging the aftermarket radio first, and current went down to less than 10 milliamps.

Is this fairly common to have a short develop in a radio, its about 5 years old.

Im kinda relieved if it is the radio, saves a lot of other trouble shooting








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Battery Discharging 200

It sounds like you fixed your problem. However, as these cars age, one good place to look is at the wiring around the door locks. It crumbles and will have an inclination to 'ground' out due to the bumps in the road. Its on a live circuit all the time, so if it is grounding out, it does enough to drain the battery down over a few days, sometimes even less time.

It's just one of those annoying intermittent drains too, because we never know how the road is going to shift it around and it doesn't consistently ground out.

Just food for thought for the future. It's not an uncommon problem for 240's.
--
Legum servi sumus ut liberi esse possimus.








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Battery Discharging 200

Sounds like you really know your 240's. It is pretty much a knee-jerk reaction to associate "battery discharging" with the central locking system. I thought the same thing going by subject line alone.
--
-K (hope springs eternal)








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Battery Discharging 200

Joe:

The SAE (sorry, can't recall what J1xxx document that was) design guideline for keep-alive data current for an entire car is 20mA. The purpose of this spec was to ensure there would be enough juice left in a good battery to start the car after it sat for 2 months, then to add margin (for a worn out battery), they pushed it further to ensure that a 50% storage left battery would be able to start the car after two months, so the 10mA spec is what folks design for.

200mA should not be enough to significantly drain the battery overnight though. This makes me question the health of your alternator as a common alt. failure on bricks is that one or two "phases" of the three total fail due to bad diode(s) in the diode plate. If one diode dies, your down to around a 50A alternator, if two die, you are now dealing with an alt. that can put out no more than 25A... not enough to fully charge the battery with the car running.

My recommendation would be to drive over to Advance Auto or Autozone and have them do a free charging system and battery test. In short, my best guess is a failing alt.

jorrell
ps. 200mA "sleep current" on a aftermarket Asian radio is not great, but not the worst I've heard of.
--
92 245 245K miles, IPD'd to the hilt, 06 XC70, 00 Eclipse custom Turbo setup...currently close to running again!








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Battery Discharging 200

Does the Autozone have a portable current tester to check the alternator without removing it? last time I had one checked (years ago) I had to remove it.








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Battery Discharging 200

Yes, they have a little cart with a tester on it that they will roll out to your car. They will hook up two clamps to the battery and a current clamp around the positive battery cable. Once you start the car, the current clamp will "measure" the charge current going to the battery, in the case of a 240, anything under approx. 70 to 80A is a sign of a problem. If they don't have the "cart", find another parts store!

jorrell
--
92 245 245K miles, IPD'd to the hilt, 06 XC70, 00 Eclipse custom Turbo setup...currently close to running again!








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Battery Discharging 200

The only way I can think that you would see the full alternator rated output going into the battery cable is with a dead-flat battery that won't even light the dome lamp. And then only for a few seconds as the battery will build voltage quickly. You have to do the carbon pile test to load the alternator properly. The trouble is, with today's brightly lit, big box auto parts stores, and their minimum wage counter staff, it's a crap shoot getting a proper test you can bank on.

I took a PnP alternator to a Kragen's and the young guys spent a long time looking in their test machine's instruction book, more time looking quizzically at adapter cables, then ran a test and pronounced my unit DOA.

A day later at a small-town NAPA, the greybeard parts man needed no refresher course, chucked the old Bosch on his machine and clipped the leads. Fired it up, showed me all the needles jumping up into the "Green" zone, and said: "Perfectly good". It's been running in my son's car (big stereo, seat heaters, E-codes) for three years now.
--
Bob (son's 81-244GL B21F/M46, dtr's 83-244DL B23F/M46, my 94-944 B230FD and 89 745 (LT-1 V8); hobbycar 77 MGB, and a few old motorcycles)








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Current digression 200

Hi Bob,

You remember that cute ambient temp and voltmeter accessory I found several Christmases ago in Target's $5 gift display? I've never seen another like it, and my daughter never found the second copy of it I'd given her. Its audible alert function recently prevented a roadside assistance call (my son-in-law now has the car for airport and train station commuting) when the brushes finally became too short.

For just a week, I added a cheap ammeter, to gain a slightly new perspective on an intermittent charging trouble I was after. This is something you know I don't recommend, at least not by using the old tech method bringing the entire load and charging current inside the cabin. The wiring needed to do this adds unwarranted fire risk, and in my case, brought me new passengers when I neglected to plug the hole in the firewall after removing it.

My experience watching the ammeter: Despite the unproven calibration, the only way I could ever see it exceed 30A indicated, was to kick the blower on while the lights, rear window defogger and wiper were running, and the car was not. Even then it settled back below 30 discharge after the blower came up to speed.

Of course, the way it was wired, the charge side never saw the total alternator output, only the portion being given back to the battery.

The 200mA reading Joe sees is suspect. This is more like a couple of glove box lamps than any modern memory keep-alive. I'm thinking a double check of the multimeter's accuracy should be made before indicting the radio, as it is pretty common for the meter's shunt resistor to cook sometime during its service. An easy check would be that glove box light - should be 100mA give or take.

I enjoyed your story about the bench testing of your junkyard Bosch. Our yards don't let you bring anything back, save cores, so when I pulled my last alternator, my inspection was limited to eyeballing the slip rings under the regulator. Then it went on the car for final test. I've had two instances of open rotor coils, so I might sneak a continuity tester into the yard next time.






--
Art Benstein near Baltimore

Never ask your 3-year old brother to hold a tomato.








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Nice pictures, but .... 200

Hi.

Very cute mouse -- not the commensal vermin, Mus musculus or House mouse (note the fuzzy tail with an edge revealing a white underside), but most likely some variety of native "deer mouse" or "white-footed mouse" (Peromyscus sp.), in grey immature pelage (adults are a reddish brown), that I can't identify further from that angle of view.

Anyway, first, that indoor/outdoor/voltage thing that you're illustrating has been widely sold by various companies over, I'd say, about 15 or 20 years -- even Radio Shack sold them for a time -- I've still got that in my '84, still working (the little AAA batteries last about 2 years at a time.

And I'm glad you know enough to be very cautious about bringing so much amperage into the passenger compartment for such an ammeter -- not to mention that you're adding resistance that reduces (hopefully just a little) output to the battery. For readers emulating your dashboard ammeter, the safer way to do that is to use an ammeter that includes an external shunt -- the shunt remains out in the engine compartment and only light gauge wires (carrying miniscule current) from the shunt have to be lead to the gauge body in the dashboard.








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Not a rat then... 200

Hi Ken,

Wow, you seem to know my timid passenger. He was quickly gone after that lucky picture, so no other angles are available, only better resolution. Thanks for the identification. One of his brothers made the trip into the receptacle of my bagless canister vac without apparent trauma.

Regarding the $5 device, I've seen similar items selling for much more in RV catalogs and such, but don't recall any with the same features: page 1 page 2

This one takes one AAA cell, which I note only from the spec sheet, because I have certainly not replaced it in 3 years. When you mentioned the battery for yours, I wondered why it needed any. Now I wonder how badly it has leaked. Sure was a bargain price.

Yes, I tried to stress the "not recommended" part of the ammeter adventure, where I only had it there for a quick test using what I had, wired with 8 gauge including a pair of in-line 60A fuses to add even more resistance. Because of the starter midpoint between alternator and battery, I needed to do some temporary rewiring anyway, which would still be necessary if one were to pursue the remote shunt gauge. That meter I had was just plain ugly anyway.

Again. Good safety advice. Don't try this at home.
--
Art Benstein near Baltimore

You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.








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Current digression 200

I checked the current draw this morning.
Without radio draw is about 5 mA
With radio its about 200mA

New battery has been cranking fine all weekend, no sign of weakness with all the Weekend start and stops and short trips. So Im optimistic alternator and battery are OK.

I have been using my digital meter, and for comparison connected my old Simpson analog. The analog read the same, but interesting, it captures current surges from the clock. Every 1 (ONE) second, the needle surges one milliamp or so. I would think this is the mechanism ticking away, and the each second there is a small surge in current.

My Digital meter doesn't seem to capture the surge, it must filter it out?

Thanks for all the input, I think the short in the radio, caused a higher draw, which may have contributed to shortening the battery life. Over 2 days, 200mA, can add up two almost 10 amp hours of drain on the battery.

I went straight for the after market radio as the suspect from reading the FAQ and other posts on battery drain. Tin whiskers in the radio causing a short somewhere.








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Hmm, therefore (interesting current drain facts) ... 200



re: "...Without radio draw is about 5 mA.... The analog read the same, but interesting, it captures current surges from the clock. Every 1 (ONE) second, the needle surges one milliamp or so. I would think this is the mechanism ticking away, and the each second there is a small surge in current...."

That's about what I reported to you. My '93, without a clock but with the OEM radio (memory presets), is about 7.8 mA, whereas you report 5 mA (wish you could have given another decimal of accuracy). Assuming your '90 has the same diagnostic memory as my '93, I can assume that my radio's memory's draw is the difference, or 2.8 mA -- good to know!

I'm wondering, though, about our independent measures attributed to the clock.
I measured a total of 12 mA, with pulses to 25 mA. You reported only ~1 mA. That's a lot of discrepancy.
In my original post about this several months ago, another couple of guys commented that my measurements were close to their own.
I'm wondering, is your clock the small 2 inch variety (e.g., did you replace the big clock with a tach)?

Thanks.








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Current digression 200

Hi Joe,

I'm glad to know you checked the sanity of your dvm reading before going to the work of pulling the radio. Just the fact you own a Simpson removes most of the questions to the assumptions we make about how measurements are reported. I've watched the same behavior due to the clock, with the benefit of almost 40 years to get familiar with the ballistics of a 260's needle providing information that is totally masked by any dvm regardless of sample rate. Though the rubber test leads are dry rotted, I won't toss it in the trash anytime soon, because it is easy to replace the shunt resistor that determines the 500mA scale.

I know very little about aftermarket radios; only my youngest yet has one. All the remainder are those that came with Volvos. In the first year of owning Volvos, I had more time into repairing the cassette/radios than in the cars. I still have one that is kicking my butt, an old "Microprocessor 4" from 1983. If I give up on it, another one marked "Volvo" will be in its slot. I didn't even give a thought to the RoHS revolution and tin whiskers! Guess I'm living in the past with my old Simpson and 1980's electrical experience.

Should be pretty quick to verify the radio is the ultimate culprit, provided you can allow the car to sit long enough.


--
Art Benstein near Baltimore

Church bulletin: Barbara remains in the hospital and needs blood donors for more transfusions. She is also having trouble sleeping and requests tapes of Father Jack's sermons.








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Battery Discharging 200

Jorrell, I stopped at Autozone, the guys working this morning didnt seem to be that familiar with their tester, we hooked it up, and the current Probe read 177 Amps, which i dont believe. I dont see how it could have double the normal output. I ve got a new battery, Ill drive it see how it goes.








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I think most of the guys were missing the obvious .... 200

You wrote that with the defective radio, the external battery drain was about 200 mA, but after disconnecting that radio, the drain went down to about 10 mA. That is within the ballpark (assuming a newer 240) of the normal battery drain that I reported to you in the earlier message "Normal Battery Drain" -- i.e., from ~7 to 20 mA, depending on whether you have a clock.
(If you've got an older 240 without a "memory" radio or diagnostic memory, it should be much lower, about 1/3 of a mA).

So, it's obvious that if your battery (with only a 10 mA external drain through the car's battery cables) was still going dead, it would indicate the presence of an internal short in the battery. Clearly the external drain isn't excessive, so the battery itself must have been at fault.
Also possible is that your battery was old and/or heavily sulfated (so it can't absorb or hold a charge anymore) -- you didn't say how old your battery was.

And now that you've got a new battery, we'll see (as you said). If your battery no longer goes flat, it's safe to assume that the old battery was defective. On the other hand, if it still goes dead, we've got a mystery.

By the way, you never answered what year 240 you have. As I've indicated, it tells us what the drain should be, as newer cars have more electronic memories added to it. And it also would be nice to know if you've got a clock or a tach, as the clock also drains the battery.








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I think most of the guys were missing the obvious .... 200 1990

Sorry, Ive got a 1990.

So far after a Saturday of constant starts and stops, its cranking fine.

I think Ill go for a few days with the radio disconnected, then plug it back in and see what happens.








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Well, before you do that .... 200 1990

Before you rehookup the radio, take another reading on the negative cable to negative battery post again, and check the car's current drain. Next hook up the suspect radio, and if it still shows 20x increase (i.e., from about 10 mA as you reported to 200 mA with the radio as you also reported), I'd think that the radio was no good. No sense running down (when the car's left shut down) a new battery -- leaving it discharged leads to premature "aging" (things like sulfation, etc.).

Good luck.








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Normal battery drain .... 200

Can't say what the incidence of defective radios are, because I still have the OEM radios in all my cars. But just as point of reference, here are some normal drains, following (you didn't mention the year of your car):

My '84 240 -- it doesn't have OBD-I, has had it's old clock disconnected, and has a mechanical radio (no electronic station memories whatsoever):
a steady 0.372 ma (or 0.000372 amps) -- I have no idea why it should be even this much, but it's very, very little.

My wife's '93 240 -- it has a OBD-I (the LED-blinker diagnostics), an electronic radio (with station memory presets and a coded antitheft feature), and it has the big clock:
mostly ~12 ma, but briefly pulsing or spiking to ~25 ma once per second for the clock motor.

My own '93 240 -- the same OBD-I and electronic radio, but without a clock (it has a big tach, but no little clock, instead):
a steady 7.8 ma (i.e., 0.0078 amps)








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Battery Discharging 200

That seems like quite a bit for a radio to pull just to keep its memory alive.

Look for wiring problems behind the radio, as the wires are VERY close to the scissors action of the wiper arm assembly right behind it. Also, if there is any kind of amp or other device powered up by the radio, it may not be properly connected to the stereo "accessory turn-on" lead or whatever the manufacturer labels it. Possibly it's on all the time. I've even seen stereos with the battery and switched power reversed (usually red and yellow wires), with unpredictable results.

Worst comes to worst another stereo isn't too expensive. Save your adapter faceplate and wiring plugs, if that is how the install was done.

Anyway good luck with it.
--
::: Rob Bareiss, New London CT ::: 92 244 ::: 90 745GL ::: 90 745T ::: 84 242DL ::: 90 745T Parts ::: Used to have : 86 244DL, 87 244DL, 91 244, 88 244GL, 88 744GLE, 82 245T, 86 244DL, 87 244DL, 88 245DL, 89 244DL!








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Battery Discharging 200

I took the battery back to the NAPA store I purchased from, it checked out low, and they gave me free replacement.

Im going to drive a few days without the radio plugged in. Yes, I priced at Crutchfield, a replacement with harness around 100. I installed the current radio (from Crutchfield, who IMHO take all the frustration out of installing a radio) over 5 years ago, so a short developing isnt too surprising.







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