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For those that don't know my car is a 06 GT. Car has a parasitic draw. Found out that it's the alternator. The alt has a fuse between it and the battery (I added thicker gauge wires as part of the big 3 upgrade but I don't remember why I added the 250A fuse). Does this mean the alt is no longer good? Or what can I do to resolve this?
Original draw is 244ma. Pulled out the 10Amp alt fuse in the engine bay and it dropped to 50ma. Then pulled out the radio fuse and it dropped further to 33ma. So the alt is drawing a lot of power for some reason.
Alternator is a 2010 referbished Denso.
Radio is a Dynavin N8.
Someone mentioned that I should add a ground wire to the alt. Not sure what this will do but I'll try anything.
My previous Mustang was an '06 GT and had the same issue. I put eight batteries in it over the years. Ford switched to a 3-phase Denso alternator in (I think) 2009, probably, at least in part, because of this problem.
SUPERCHARGED RED ROCKET ------------------Master-Moderator
Joined: May 11, 2006
Posts: 10,644
Likes: 2,509
From: Carnegie, PA
My previous Mustang was an "05" GT... Had the very same issues and ended up replacing batteries 3 times within a span of 15 months... My local dealership even brought in a field service engineer to run a diagnostic check on the electrical system which included monitoring the milliamp current draw... Following 7 days of monitoring by the field service engineer, I was informed that the results of the diagnostic check was negative and the current draw for the milliamps were within normal specs...
His diagnosis and explanation was from not operating the vehicle often enough along with the active alarm system always running in the background... His only solution, keep a battery tender connected whenever the vehicle is not being operated...WTF!
Update. Seems it wasn't the alternator but the radio.
I have a Dynavin N8. Took the console apart.
When I disconnect the main harness it goes from 2.00ma down to 0.38ma. When I unplug the subwoofer plug after plugging the main harness back in, it only drops from 2.00ma to 1.3ma. When I plug it back in and disconnect the bottom connectors for the subwoofers it does the same thing 2.00ma to 1.3ma.
So there is something else that's consuming power other than the subs. I added a 2010 steering wheel and added wires for the wheel controls but that's about it for modifying the main harness. Any ideas?
