Just found out that my 97 Expy kill battery after setting a week. Now I replaced the battery less than 2 weeks ago with a Red Top Optima. Not sure what's going on. Any ideas??

 

leave your radar detector on? and parked the truck in the garage? so every time you leave the house and turn on the house alarm, the detector goes crazy??? and dead battery???????

don't laugh, its happened to me. took awhile for me to figure it out!

 

No Radar detector and removed glove box light

 

Think I will trade in the 97 Expy on a 05 Excursion 6.0

 

Take off both battery cables and check the resistence betwwen them. Sounds like you may have a short or a small draw on your battery. Optima batteries are the best. Put the positive cable back on the battery and put an amp meter between the negative post and the negative cable mounting terminal to see how much draw there is in the connection. If you don't have an infinite resistence reading or zero amp draw sell it quick.

 

alright, here is a tip for you, you will not have a 0 amp draw or infinite resistance if you do what kaboom says. There is always some juice being used. (keep time on the clock, run the underhood light, keep your ecu tuned, etc.) your best bet is to do what kaboom says and test the current draw, then start pulling fuses one at a time until the draw drops significantly. I have never had this problem myself but that is what others have done.


also on a side note, get your battery tested (autozone will do it for free) if the battery is damaged, it may not hold a charge for as long as it should. This did happen to me and got to the point where it would drain out within a day.

 

Thanx for the helping hand on tips. I forgot all about the keep alive stuff. I was using a battery charger while it was in my garage on the original battery. It was 6 yrs old when I replaced it. Now I use it occasionally on the new one since I leave the tuner plugged in all the time.

 

Checked amp draw from battery with hood light removed , its only 0.69 amps which don't seem like much, next I will measure the same on my 01 expy before I start pulling fuses.

 

Check it again after 30-45 minutes. You have to wait for the batter saver to time out.

If you're still drawing that much after that time, you have a problem. Normal draw should be around 50-100 mA max after timeout.

Steve

 

Most Truck/SUV batteries can supply tons of starting current, they are very bad on continuous power. Typically around 50-120 amp/hour. If you have a .69 amp draw, it could very easily drain the battery in a weak

 

Just wanted to let all know that the problem is the factory radio, when I disconnect radio discharge drops to just a few ma's. After thinking about this I have had intermittent problems with the radio like forgotten memory, goes blank, won't turn on. When I removed also noticed bottom was quite warm, so next is what yo replace it with.

 

If it will fit I've got the stock radio out of my 2002 F-150 in the garage in a box. It's one of those 6 cd units where the cd holder is in the console. Changed the radio to one that plays mp3 on a usb chip.