spudbudy

OK Gang, Welcome to my current nightmare. I bought my wife a 2013 suburban LTZ to replace her equinox with oil consumption issues. We previously owned 5 other suburbans. Other then a bad motor in one from the factory no issues other then regular maintenance. This "NEW" suburban is cursed. We bought it in October of 16 with about 26K on the clock. While sitting in the driveway with the radio on for less then 10 minutes the battery would tell us the battery was low. Well no big deal after 3 years a battery is kind of expected.The battery was replaced with a autozone brand battery everything is good or is it? Seemed to fix the battery issue for now but... it's back with a vengeance. We pull a travel trailer and installed a brake controller. Everything seemed ok until... We got to Colorado. if the trailer is hooked up the battery gauge shows 14+ volts however unhooked it starts at 14+ after an 1-1/2 hours the gauge drops to 12.5 volts which is verified by an obd2 gauge. Everything works as expected. Get out of the car and try to restart it the battery is acting like its dead. Needing a jumpstart. Car starts and its at 14+ volts again. Took it to autozone everything checks out ok charging fine battery load tests out perfect. This is driving my wife crazy because she will no longer drive it because it may not start again warm or not. Battery has load tested multiple times and alternator was changed anyway. Problem still exists. Battery is going dead in driveway after 20 minutes. What possibly could be that heavy an amp draw to kill the battery that fast. I can do allmost anything but this is a stumper. Can someone please point me in the right direction??? ANYONE, ANYONE

intheburbs

If you think you have a parasitic drain, start pulling fuses. It's really the only way to pin it down for sure. Start by measuring the current draw with the ignition off to get a baseline, then start pulling fuses until your find the source of the drain.

spudbudy

OK I'm back. Have some new details to share with everyone. I now have a dc amp meter to check the parasitic draw down. With the vehicle sitting for 24 hours and a fully charged battery, with nothing running no doors opened I have just under a .5 amp draw. Which let's face it too much. Now I've started the car let it warm up to operating temp. Rolled down the window so I can turn the car off but not open the door. So with the radio on and whatever else is on in the background. It started at 7 amps then settled down at just under 6 amps. So after 5 minutes I opened the door to turn off the radio and checked it again. The amps started at 5 amps and slowly dropped to 2 amps where it stayed for about 5 minutes then it dropped back to .5 amps.

Now I haven't started to attempt to pull fuses as of yet. But in reading lots of other post going back at least 10 years not many people have had any success in finding the culprit. Keeping my fingers crossed that maybe I will get lucky.