Hey guys, I have been having problems with my battery draining overnight while the car just sits there. I had the battery checked by Autozone and the battery is good. If I use the car every day the battery never dies but if I leave it sitting for 2 days then it will die.

While trying to figure out my problem I came across an ericthecarguy video about parasitic draws and it seemed to fit my problem perfectly so I used my volt meter the way he instructed and I was seeing a .20 amp draw on my battery which is much higher than the acceptable 50 milliamp draw (according to the video).

So I got to pulling fuses and found that in the under dash fuse box, fuse number 3 (7.5) was causing the issues. That fuse was for the integrated control unit, the ceiling light,. trunk light, and data link connector.

I am not really sure where to go from here though because in his video it just ended up being a switch that was left on. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thank you!

 

Is the draw eliminated by unplugging the ICU?

Did you do any mods prior to this problem?

 

Mine does the same thing..


A while ago i smelled an electrical burn for a moment. Then i find that my dome light stays on in the door setting. I just havent gotten around to fix it. I remember it used to have dimming when the doors closed.. now it just stays lit.

So if you find the cause post it up here.

 

No, no mods where done to the vehicle and actually this started pretty much out of nowhere. I hadn't made any changes i remember of when this started happening. I haven't tried unplugging it and honestly I don't even know what it does. Unplugging the fuse fixed stopped the draw though. I wouldn't mind not having the dome light or the trunk light but I don't know how not having the icu would affect the vehicle.

 

icu controls intermittent wipers, headlight chime, and I think hi-low switching for headlights.

 

I had a bad ICU in a 94 del sol. I went to a junkyard and pried another one off of the back of a fuse box. I opened the old one up just for curiosity and the circuit board had burn marks on it. It was draining my battery too.

 

Just to be on the safe side, where is the switch that indicates if the trunk is closed or not. Before pulling out the ICU wouldn't it be smart to check if the trunk light is turning off?

 

Or just remove the bulb to see whether the drain is eliminated.

 

Yeah, that works too. I will update ASAP.

 

I pulled the light from the trunk and I am no longer getting a reading on the multimeter so I think that was the culprit. I don't mind not having a light in the trunk since it didn't help much to begin with anyway. Thanks for the help.