Re: urquattro killing battery??

[Luis Marques <marques@ti.com>]

ejfluhr@austin.ibm.com (Fluhr) wrote:
>
> My urquattro seems to be killing its car battery over the course of a
> week or two if the car is not used.  I have measured the current
> draw on the battery when the car is off and it is only ~50mA (40mA for
> the radio memory & I think ~10mA for the clock).  This does not seem
> high enough to kill a battery, so I am wondering if anyone knows of
> something else that might do it.  I thought the radiator fan after-run
> circuit might be the culprit, but that appears to stop running after
> the car cools down enough.
> 
> Any ideas?

Are you sure you don't have a marginal battery (about to go bad)?

I once had a problem where my battery wouldn't hold enough charge to
start the car after sitting for two days.  Upon removing the plugs and
looking in, I noticed that one of the cells looked different - like
corroded or degraded.  The battery would probably test fine, but was
really marginal.  I put a new Interstate in and all the problems were
cured.

I guess the lesson is don't trust 100% on the portable battery testers. 
You must also do a visual inspection of the internals of the battery.

Luis Marques
'87 4kcsq