Hi. I have an '89 Accord LXI. I seem to have a constant battery drain. I've pulled the fuses one at a time and found several that have a voltage reading. Should any actually have constant voltage or are these circuits shorting out? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.
Jediracer

 

you have put a test light between the negative cable and negative battery post, then pulled fuses? or you went and checked fuses to see if they are 'hot at all times'?
without buying a multi meter, and trying to make it easy to diagnose; hook up a test light between the negative cable and the negative battery post, there should be a low current draw enough to just make the test light <U>glow</U>, this current draw is from the radio/clock back up.
If the test light is bright, start pulling fuses until the light goes back to a "glow".

When you find it, just repost with a fuse number//fuse size//location, and circuit description.

 

Hi. Thanks for the response. With the negative cable off, and a test light between the negative cable and the negative battery terminal, I get a pulsing light. I removed every fuse and it continued until I removed the 10A fuse for the ECU Clock. This is location 11 on the engine compartment fuse panel. Is this normal? Also, do I not have a short any longer?

Thanks again.
Jediracer.

 

Hi. Thanks for the response. With the negative cable off, and a test light between the negative cable and the negative battery terminal, I get a pulsing light. I removed every fuse and it continued until I removed the 10A fuse for the ECU Clock. This is location 11 on the engine compartment fuse panel. Is this normal? Also, do I not have a short any longer?
Thanks again.
Jediracer.

 

Odd, I'm not sure what would cause it to pulse,[bright light?] but the ECU clock fuse is always drawing a very small amount of current. As I said before it should just be enough to make the test light glow dimly.
Was it pulsing at the same speed as the door open key in chime?
I'm going to have to go look at the schematic to see if I can find any point of interest for this problem.
Have you had the battery tested?
aftermarket stereo?

EDIT; I checked the schematic that fuse feeds to the ECU, Clock backup, and Radio backup; Wire color is White/yellow stripe.
I suspect it might be grounding somewhere, you might wind up having to do point to point wire checks, or unplug the radio, then the clock and then the ECU to findout if the pulse will stop when one of the components is unplugged, and help you decide which 'branch' of the circuit has the fault.


Modified by hondadude at 3:48 PM 2/25/2007

 

Hi. I have discovered that the pulsing stops when I unplug the radio wire harness. What should I do next?

Thanks again.
Jediracer

 

remove the radio and do a visual inspection of all the wires that connect to the radio, then trace the power wires to their source, I'm not sure if the wire color changes before it gets to the radio, but I would look for white/yellow like hondadude suggested.

another possibility that shouldn't be overlooked, try swapping out the radio itself if you can, one of the internal components might be shorting.

 

I just bought a 1998 CRV and found that it had this same unadvertised feature. Battery was dead the next morning after I got it home. I pulled the neg battery lead and put a multi-meter inline. I got the same pulsing effect that you described. I pulled fuses until I found the guilty cicrcuit, which also happened to be the radio. Very strange, about a 1 second cycle. Anyway, I left the fuse out and all is well for now.

What did you do to fix yours?