Battery Drain

CHERYLGILLENWATERS

MEMBER
JEEP LIBERTY

Any ideas on common issues with battery drain on 2004 Jeep Liberty? Things to check and how? After 2 day weekend not using vehicle, it is sluggish to crank on Monday, some clicking. Then cranks okay at lunch, but after going out to lunch, then trying to return to work, battery completely dead and have to be jumped off. Then cranked okay at end of day. The next day (afternoon), some clicking and almost didn't crank. Battery is less than 11 months old.

1 Reply

KASEKENNY

MECHANIC
18,907 POSTS

We need to start with load testing the battery. Here is a guide that will help with doing this:

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/car-battery-load-test

Basically, we need to find out if we have a drain on the battery. Here is a guide that talks about the common things that cause the battery drains:

https://www.2carpros.com/articles/car-battery-dead-overnight

https://youtu.be/z5F7WpgjaRs

However, there is a chance that you just left the lights on and now the battery has drained to the point it needs to be replaced again and it can't recover.

To check for this, we need to do what is called a parasitic drain test. You do this by disconnecting the negative battery cable and connect the red meter lead of your voltage meter to the battery post and the other to the negative cable.

Take a look at the diagram below for how to set this up.

Then set your meter to amps and it should read less than .035 amps (35 milliamps) with all the doors closed and the hood light/latch disconnected. If it is higher than we need to remove fuses until it drops and that will tell us what system is remaining on when the vehicle is off.

Please run through this and let us know what you find.

Thanks

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