Hey all,

I've been having a battery drain problem with my 96 GLE. I've gone through about 5 batteries in a year. I just replaced the alternator 6 months ago, so it's not that...plus I can charge the battery with my garage charger, put it in the car, and it'll be dead in a week without ever turning her on.

I just checked the current draw when off, and it is 80-90 mA with the hood open, 60-70 with the hood switch pressed down. About 40 of that is from the BCM fuse.

Is this reasonable? It sounds pretty damn reasonable...hopefully unplugging all the fuses magically fixed something? If not, I'm in the market for a new battery - this one might not be "built to last...duralast". What brands do you recommend?

Thanks

 

This may help,

http://forums.maxima.org/4th-generat...rain-help.html

I checked my 98 SE which works normally and does not have this problem. I opened my hood and checked current with everything else off and closed. The draw was approximately 0.1 Amps = to 100 milliamps. This is the same as Matt's result. If I depress the switch that senses if the hood is closed after about 30-60 seconds the current draw goes down to about 0.01 Amps or 10 milliamps. This must be the sleep mode kicking in. That is quite a a difference. I can understand if another switch from the alarm system is malfunctioning, of missing, the car would never go into sleep mode.

I'm not certain if the 0.1 Amps is enough to drain the battery over the period of 1-2 days but you certainly should fix it to work properly as noted above so that it does go into the sleep mode.

 

Thank you so much! I think I got it!

That thread is awesome. My security light was blinking every second like the thread mentions, meaning some switch wasn't letting it go to sleep. For me, it was the hood switch. I had an accident a year ago, and the new hood must be misaligned to the hood switch.

As soon as I disconnected the hood switch, the security light would go solid after locking and would engage (very useful when living close to Oakland...). I'll fix the alignment later, but let's hope that the battery stays charged now...thanks again!

 

Glad I could help you out.