A small request. Could someone please do me a favor? After driving your 05-09 Mustang, pop the hood and remove fuse 43 (circled in Pic). When you do, do you hear a faint clicking sound? Then place it back in and remove it again. Does the sound repeat? Trying to track down a drain issue and want to know if other Mustangs do this.
I am well aware of everything that draws power from the battery. I don't need tips on how to do a battery test or suggestions to change my radio.
I just need someone to help me out and perform what I am asking. Thank you.

 

Tried This A.M. But My Battery Was Dead So I Slow Charged it and Got Er Started and Let Run For 1/2 an Hour To Charge & Let Fluids Circulate. No Noise and No Spark at Fuse. I would Think if That Fuse Had a Draw You Could Maybe See and Hear a Bit of a Spark Noise Right At Fuse Block!

Also Got Sidetracked For an Hour or So Chasing a Wayward Poodle For a Mile or So Through a Walnut & Then Almond Field on My Very Slow Lawn Tractor! Wife Corraled Her in The Harley Truck at the Other End By Sheer Luck or Divine Intervention. Neither of Us Had Ever Been Down Either Location! Poodle Managed To Stop traffic on our Two Lane Highway in Front of Our House Average Speed 60Mph For The Cars! Aye Carumba! The Poodle Was Being Chased By The Dogs Groomer Who The Poodle Got away From! Oh And The Groomer Also Had One of Her Own Poodles Get Loose and And I Caught Her By Sheer Luck as Well Not Knowing At the Time Another Dog Was Loose! Anyhoo Did My Good Deed For The Day!

Be Advised A Gt-500 Does Have a Bit Different Setup But Gave it a Go!

@VGMStudios

KC

 

I Would Love To Have Some Non Gt-500 05-09 S-197 Owners To Try This Little Experiment For VGM as Well! Only Takes a few Minutes!

KC

 

Thank you very much KC for checking your car. So yours doesn't make any faint clicking noise when pulling fuse 43? Humm I'm suspicious that my alt is drawing power when car is off which would explain my dead battery if I let the car sit for a day but I'll need more data. I really hope someone else will be kind enough to check and help out.

And thanks for encouraging other to help. You wouldn't believe the amount of replies I got over on FB. Everything from "tips" to "bro change your radio" yet NO one would take 2 seconds to help and check thier car. Same here 95 reads and only you cared to help/reply... So much for "community" haha. I just find it astonishing.

Crazy story about the dogs. Sounds like something that would happen in a comedy movie. Glad everything turned out well.

 

Well, Realize That The Views are Mostly From Guests Who Can't Reply But I am Hoping One Of The Regular Members Will Take a Moment To Cross Check Me.

The Lady Who Lost The Dog Was Very Grateful and Brought us a Pizza Later in The Evening and The Wife & I Really Clicked With Her and We Have a New Friend. Turns Out She is Almost a Vet and Has Connections To Help Us get Animals Fixed on the Cheap. We Have Been Trying To Adopt another Kitten/Cat but Have Been Held Up By The Lack of Reasonable Charges For The Deed! During Our Conversation We Also Found Out She was a Budweiser Girl Model Back in The Day. I Can Believe it, She is Pretty! Anyhoo it was a Real Wild Day.

KC

 

Finally got around to checking mine... At any rate, no clicking noises on my end... But also keep in mind that my battery is always fully charged, as I keep a battery tender connected whenever my car is not being operated...

 

Sorry VGM, I've been checking in on the thread but I don't have time to try this for the next couple days and didn't want to spam the thread w/ "sorry can't right now". I can give it a shot on Wed or Thursday. My car's been off the charger about a week. Looks like fuse #43 is alternator? Ok now re-reading about your alternator might be a suspect. Still the original alternator? Wonder if it's the voltage regulator

Do you still have the factory radio? (Skipper 500 ... er I mean Shaker 500 is known to drain batteries)

 

Oh also I'll start up the car but I'm avoiding driving it on the street until we get a little rain to rinse the salt off the roads (I've had a couple literal rust buckets, so trying to avoid that with this one). I've had battery drain issues before and definitely heard noises under the hood until a 20-30 minutes after shutting it off when all the electronics start going to sleep.

One thing you can check is hooking an ammeter in series to your battery and see what the current draw is with everything off. then pull #43 and see if anything changes. If memory serves, anything more than 50mA means you've got parasitic drain.

Oh and don't know if you follow Faye Hadley on Youtube/etc but she's got a good technique for getting the meter in series without disconnecting power to all the modules while you're testing. If you did break that connection, whatever's causing your draw might shut off. (and I don't know if it'd be a good idea to start the car with the meter in series ... those test leads are pretty skinny for the kind of current the starter needs).


Come to think of it...when I was having my drain issue I never found it. But around the same time I did a underdrive pulley, started getting engine codes, "CHECK CHARGING SYSTEM" on the dash, etc. So I ended up replacing my original single-phase alternator with a 3-phase Denso unit from the 2010 4.6L. And I didn't have dead battery issues after that. Wonder if my voltage regulator was going bad too.

Side note -- I'm sure you've already done it, but don't leave stuff plugged into your cigarette lighter or your OBD-II port if you're not going to be driving the car for a while. I've drained my battery a couple times by leaving a cell phone charger or bluetooth OBD-II scanner plugged in for a couple weeks while I wasn't driving it.

 

Got around to checking mine, no clicking. I only had it running for a couple of minutes though

 

Thank you @m05fastbackGT for checking. I really appreciate it. Just as long as you ran the car before removing the fuse and heard nothing then that would be perfect.

Thank you for you@Cavero and for checking your car. Yup its the alternator fuse. I have a 2010 Denso alt (referbed) and I am thinking it might be the issue or ONE of the issues to my problem. I also changed the radio to the Dynavin. Over the last summer I have done a few battery tests and came to the conclusion that the power that is being drawn after the car is asleep is the radio circut, the alt circut and the starter circut. The thing is these all change when I test and retest the car on different days so I am trying to track down what it might be since its different all the time but the radio and alt circut seems to be consistent. When I dont drive the car I remove these 3 fuses and the car seems to last more than a day but after say 3 or 4 days the battery is dead, but if I keep those fuses plugged in, its dead in a day. I start with the multimeter in series with the battery then let the car go to sleep.
I used this video to do my testing: but I will give the video you mentioned a watch. I have been thinking to get my alt tested cause the clicking has me concerend that something is not right with it.

 

That's a pretty awesome video TBH, I'm going to save that for my own reference. Fae's video is good for setting it up without breaking the circuit and having to wait a few hrs for everything to fall asleep again. And she also says to close the latch on the hood so the car goes fully to sleep. On the Mustang, I'm not sure if the latch has a electrical position switch on it or not. I've got the factory anti-theft on mine and there's a separate plunger switch about halfway back on the hood. But in a similar vein, I've seen other videos that say to close the latch on the doors with a screwdriver so you can still get into the car with it thinking the doors are shut. Because as soon as you open the door to start checking interior fuses, modules start waking up again.

Interesting on the Dynavin, I was looking at one of those too. Does it have a setting in the menu for how long to stay awake after the car's shut off? I put a android head unit in my wife's Mazda3 (Eonon was the brand but probably a lot of the same features), and you could set it to turn fully off every time you turn the key off, stay in standby for 2 hrs, 6 hrs, 8 hrs, etc before turning fully off. We also noticed with hers that after doing a software update it started eating the battery in a day (like it was still staying in standby). It stopped killing the battery so fast but the battery will still drain if you don't drive the car for a week (not sure if the battery was damaged from being flatlined).

What happens if you just pull the radio fuse?

For the alternator, check out this thread on S197Forum. Might be worth checking the diodes by putting a multimeter in AC mode across the battery terminals when the car's running. If you see an AC voltage that means the diodes aren't doing their job good enough anymore to rectify the AC coming out of the alternator's windings into DC. Dino noted in post #6 that remanuractured units usually have the original diodes, so that's definitely a possibility. You can also try their ground test (post #22) to see if you've got a bad ground.

https://www.s197forum.com/threads/ch...-light.140321/

 

Hey Cavero. Thanks do much for the link. I'll check it out for sure. I've been wanting to test the alt but I'll have to wait for warmer weather. Ya that video is pretty thorough. I'm glad I found it and that you liked it.
I did close the door latches when testing and I think I have the same setup as you in regards of the hood. There is no electrical position switch for the hood. Just the pull cable. I've been locked out of my car a few times because of a dead battery and had to crawl under the car with a long screw driver to push the latch open so I could pop the hood and charge the battery. But with the plunger on the back of the hood (I installed a remote starter) the alarm would go off if I move to hood. So I leave it open.

As for the Dynavin. It's a great unit but so expensive. I've spoken to CS about my issue. I leaned that the radio turns off after 20 mins after you turn off the car. There are 2 options to connect the radio to the car however. Instant off with key off or off after a while after key off. Just like the interior lights. I opt for off after a while cause I tend to sit in my car waiting for the wife to run into a store while the car is off. Haha.
There are no options in the settings to turn it off.
Btw thanks for mentioning the brand of radio for your wife's car. I'm currently looking for an android unit for our 2012 Cruze and although I've been looking at the Seicane units, I don't fully trust them from all the negative reviews I've read so I don't know what I'll do at this point. Would you happen to know of any other brands that might be good? Just want a small 7" unit that will let me continue to use the stock controls. Sorry to read about the troubles with your wife's car. Hope it will be figure out.

I have been pulling just the radio fuse at first. And the car lasts more than 1 day. But the same thing can be said when I also pull just the alt fuse. So my guess is something on both circuits are drawing power. My brother who is a master mechanic wants me to drop off the car so he could figure it out. I'll probably do that this spring/summer if I can figure it out myself.

 

Might be onto Something Here! Adaptation of Concept For Any Found Parasitic Loss!

Watch on Youtube To See Other Links.

 

Any updates?

My wife changed the setting on her HU that kept the radio awake for 2 hours, now it always shuts completely down when you shut the key off. So far it's been working, the car hasn't had a dead battery since. But it's also been warmer out. We've had nights where it's gotten close to freezing and the car still starts up fine. Is it the setting? Is it the weather? Hard to say.

 

@Cavero

Very interesting, as I went thru the very same parasitic draw issues that drained my batteries until connecting a battery tender whenever the Mustang is not being operated...
My question is this, is your wife's HU the stock/OEM HU or is it aftermarket?

If it is the stock HU, how exactly do you go about changing the settings so that it shuts completely down when shutting the key to the off position...

 

It's aftermarket, one of those android head units (Eonon is the brand). It has a menu setting for fast boot or fast resume, where the radio only goes to sleep for xx amount of time instead of shutting down completely. It's a 1 minute boot from off, vs an instant wake up from sleep. So the idea is if you're just going into the store or something it'd just go to sleep while you're in and then its a quick resume when you get to the car. Vs if you left the car parked overnight it'd shut down all the way to save your battery. In theory anyway. In practice it still seemed to be killing the battery regardless.

 

@Cavero

^^^^ Thanks for clarifying, as I wasn't quite sure knowing the stock HU are also well known for killing batteries due to parasitic draw issues as well, which was the reason I invested in a battery tender...

 

Just a small update. Has some time to look at the car today. Found out that the clicking noise when I pull fuse 43 is coming form the EPAS. Though it's weird cause when I pulled the data connector the same clicking noise happened. It's definitely the alternator fuse goes from 0.257 to 0.050 amps.. As pulling the radio fuse after the car sleeps does nothing. The diagnosis continues.

 

Just A Thought. Had a Member Awhile Back Who's Car Would Not Run Correct Unless Scanner Was Plugged in. Turned Out to Be a Bad Ground Somewhere. Having Scanner Plugged in Band Aided Issue. Try Leaving Scanner Connected To Dataport and See if Drain Goes Away! MAybe EPAS Has a Poor Ground. Forgive Me If I Suggested This Before! Memory is Not What it Once Was!

KC

 

So I checked the ground. Even moved to another one and it's the same thing. Also found out that the battery drain is coming from the EPAS. Whether it's the data line or the power line. Same results. So I'm going to figure out how to put a relay in line get a new battery cause this one is toast and call it a day.