Inexplicable Battery Drain.... Tracker????

I've been having battery drain problems for the last couple of months and have worked through all probable/potential causes, had the car into a decent auto electrician for diagnostic and have found no issues other than a mystery drain on the battery.

Just wondering if the problem could be the tracker pulling the battery down...... anyone had any experience of issues with Trackers going bad?

 

Battery checked first and replaced - no sign in documentation it'd ever been replaced...

Boot problem checked and found to be ok.

Have run a volt meter with battery charged connected but not connected & running all seems in order. Auto Electrician has checked all the earth's relays fuses etc and all in order!

Never heard of trackers running batteries down... Why not 'track' it down and disconnect for a few days. Had the Vecta immobilisers going faulty back in old days. Quite easy to bypass once you have done one.

Running an ammeter in series with the battery will show any current draw if any. Sparky should have done this and found any device drawing electricity. If no reading then it could be something switching on and off at a certain time. mmm, tricky

Failing that Derek then you will just have to scrap the car .

Alan.

what about this ripped from another forum...

'I drive my car very little in the cold winter months here in ...... In other words the car sits for long periods of time, sometimes weeks. I too had the battery go on me and replaced it before last winter. The car still had a battery drain and had to be jumped even though my Fluke meter read 11.8 v after 1 1/2 months of no use.

This drove me nuts. I checked all the connections on the battery and under the hood. I could find nothing loose. Finally, I tried to start it and everything went dark like I had blown a switch.

After further investigation I found my culprit. The ground wire to the battery had come loose due to vibration or whatever. The cable leaves the battery compartment and heads foreward, I assumed, to the engine compartment. It in fact terminates under the right hand passenger rear seat at a ground stud. To access this you look below the seat down in the footwell and find a plastic cover and remove it. Behind it is the ground stud. Mine was so loose I could turn it with my fingers. I cleaned up the connection, tightened down the nut and applied some electrical lacquer to the connection.

Needless to say, I have no more problems. I only takes a few minutes to check and may save you headaches.'

worth checking non?..

Never heard of a Tracker draining down a battery but it is possible, it is a device running from the battery after all.

If you know where it is the disconnect it...

Do you know what the current draw was when the auto electrician checked it?

If you pulled it and then checked the draw you'd know if it was the Tracker.

If you still have problems you could get one of those solar trickle charger devices. Solar panel sits on the screen and plugs into the ciggy lighter.

I know this would not solve the problem but would possibly keep battery charged unless your car is in the garage.  Might be worth a thought as I know that electrical problems can come and go and you can't solve a problem when it's not there.

tricky one Derek...

Alan.

My Tracker kills the GT's battery. Happened with the previous owner too who got the Tracker removed because of it. He commuted from A-B, lived/worked at B and then went home, so the car was idle for days at a time.

Tracker say it shouldn't happen unless the fitter has wired it to the courtesy light circuit.

Fitter says (and backs up with sums based on my battery's capacity) that unless you use your car regularly then the Tracker will always drain the battery eventually. Approx 2 weeks of inactivity in my case.

There are more issues with more modern BMWs than the E36 to do with the way in which the modern car's electrical systems shut down. I think the fitter mentioned a 3-step shutdown process and if the Tracker is installed in a particular way then the poor wee car never fully shuts down resulting in the battery having to cope with the Tracker AND a suite of systems which have not shut down

When I use the GT daily and don't have it on the trickle charger, it's fine.

Howard wrote: If you have a major problem, just install a battery switch and switch the battery out if you are not going to use the car for some time.

Good idea Howard... tho as I've been commuting on a  weekly/fortnightly basis for a few years now and this is only recently manifest, I want to find the source of the drain and resolve it.

I'm going to put a solar trickle charger on as well to be sure.

Use the Hyperlink Button the one to the right of the tree above. {this one  }

Was going for the bigger is better approach.... but might go for a smaller one.



Edited by nero