danimal442

Hi there,

This is my first post on the forums - you guys seem to know your stuff so thought I'd try! Anyway, I've got a 2000 Impala with about 130K miles. Everything has been running great with the old girl until recently. I've started noticing that if I don't drive her for a couple of days, I'll go to jump in and the battery is dead. I'll charge it up and it will be fine as long as I drive the car every day. But if I go out of town or drive my other girl for a few days (1967 442), the Impala's battery will be dead again. I've had the battery tested and Advance Auto says it's fine, so I'm assuming they aren't pulling my leg.

So this week I've had some spare time and I've been troubleshooting this problem. What I've done is put a amp meter in series with the battery so I can watch the current draw when the car goes to 'sleep' (when everything eventually turns off). My understanding is that a draw of something like 35-50 milliamps (0.035 - 0.050 on a 10A scale on my meter) is normal when you consider the computer, retained accessory and radio memory, etc all draw small amounts of power. What I'm seeing after pulling fuses is that one circuit in particular is drawing a substantial amount of current. The circuit in question is located on the passenger side fuse block and is called "TRK/ROOF BRP". It is a 15A fused circuit. What I see (after waiting several hours watching the meter off and on to be sure) is that with that fuse IN, the current never drops below .175 on my meter (again, at 10A scale). However, if I pull that fuse OUT, the current drops to 0.015. The difference between this fuse being in and out is more than 10X.

I know that on this circuit is the interior dome lights but what else is on this circuit? Does anyone have a diagram of this particular circuit? Thanks for any help in advance!

tech2

that circuit powers the rear compartment/trunk lights and some interior lights depending on your options. any of these on?

if I knew the rop build i could tell you what to unplug to eliminate the draw. check the glove box or spare tire cover for the rpo codes...does it have ua6, 9c1, 966, dh6 or c79?

danimal442

The only things that are switchable as far as I can tell are the inside lights (1 at each of the two rear doors, and the two on the inside rear view mirror), none of these are triggered "on". Oh, also the trunk light, but that looks like it's off (I crawled in the trunk from the passenger compartment and it's off when the trunk is closed).

Okay RPO codes for mine were on the inside trunk lid. Were you wanting to know all the codes for my car or just the ones you mentioned? If the latter, the only ones I show that you mentioned are DH6 and C79, none of the others are on the sticker. Does that help?

tech2

yep

the powered accessories for those build rpo's are sunshade lights and reading lights. also rear compartment and dome light if it has rpo 9c6

the funny thing is that fuse (trunk, roof and brd/battery run down) should be powered off after 20min by the bcm if any draw is present; as part of the battery rundown protection.

can you check for any body codes...b1482?

pulling the connectors or bulbs to the above lights one at a time to locate the draw would be the next step if you can't retrieve body codes.