my car is eating batteries...HELP

Before tearing into your dash, why not make sure your new "good" battery is strapped down nice and tight? If it's not the vibration will make it go bad in a short amount of time.

I had a Taurus that would go through batteries frequently and it drove me crazy looking for the cause. It wasn't strapped down tight and the plates inside the battery were being destroyed by the vibration and movement of the battery.

Once I strapped the battery down tight the problem went away for good.

I say try the easy and obvious stuff first :nice:
 
alright, where can i get a tie down for my battery? they have the one size fits all ones at kragen but i was looking for a fox body specific one, any ideas??

You can probably make one easy enough with a block of wood. It's just a wedge shaped piece of plastic with a hole in the middle for the bolt to hold it down.

There's one listed on Ebay for $5. Just search for "mustang battery hold down"
 
find a plastic or metal block that is just wide enough to take up the slack in your battery tray. wedge it in tight so your battery wont move. then drill a hole through the block and run a bolt through it
 
Have you ever done a AMP test to see how much current the car draws when powered down?

You need a DMM capable of reading AMPS in DC. Simply set it, unhook one battery lead and hook the meter up in series. The drain should be less than 1 Amp.
 
hey sorry to post on a old thread but Im having a similiar problem battery gettin drained in matter of days I had my old 1 tested it came up bad

so i put in a optima group 31 battery and it sucked that 1 dry too and i only drove it for maybe 30 minutes 2 days ago after puttin different battery in the same day(battery read 12.71 volts bfore installation)

i just checked it and got 2.55 volts but slowly climbing after i disocnnected battery cable i tried to do a milli amp test but wasnt getting any numbers at all, i had my dmm in series between battery and the ground cable, i slo did it between positive and pos cable and didnt get any reading anyone have any ideas whats goin on???

this problem only started recently

i do have underdrive pulleys on car maybe thats a problem? i only drove it 30 minutes on a fresh battery

car is 84 mustang with 92 motor and tranny
 
ok guys to do a parasitic load test it requires 2 people first person disconects the negative terminal and holds a test light from the terminal on the battery to the cable end. the test light should light up extremely dim.the current flowing is to keep clock memory,ecu voltage and radio presets. if the light is pretty bright the 2nd guy starts pulling fuses til the light dims. once the light dims youve found the circiut thats drawing your battery dead.now find out whats staying on ie-glove box light truck light stuff like that. good luck
 
ok guys to do a parasitic load test it requires 2 people first person disconects the negative terminal and holds a test light from the terminal on the battery to the cable end. the test light should light up extremely dim.the current flowing is to keep clock memory,ecu voltage and radio presets. if the light is pretty bright the 2nd guy starts pulling fuses til the light dims. once the light dims youve found the circiut thats drawing your battery dead.now find out whats staying on ie-glove box light truck light stuff like that. good luck

That's good advice.

Before even going that far, i'd check the usual suspects.
Glove compartment light, visor lights, and my favorite, the hatch light, which CAN'T be seen if you have the cover on.
 
i dunno if this helps, but when i got in my car i would usually just flick on my electric fan and have it running the entire time i was driving regardless of temp, just so i wouldnt forget at my car would over heat, but since then ive stopped doing that and waited till my car warms up to turn it on, and my battery seems to be charging just fine.