My 2004 Prius has a .19 v drain on the battery according to the garage I took it to. Before taking it in, I was replacing battery about every year for the last three years. None would hold a charge for longer than 2 days or so and after a year it would be dead. Hard to believe I would have 4 bad 12V batteries in a row. Anyway, it was maintained by the dealer up to this point but I am currently out of state. The local dealer is a major scam so my car is at an independent garage. It has been there for five days and they still can't find the where the drain is coming from. Yes, they are checking all the fuses, circuits, etc. but so far nothing. Any suggestions anyone? Thank you in advance.
I think you mean .19 amp drain. Is that right? How much do you drive the car normally? Miles per week, how often, that sort of thing. Do you have SKS? If so, it should be turned off when not in use, which reduces drain a bit. .19 amp drain over 24 hours is 4.5 amp-hour. The battery has much more usable capacity than that, and should not go flat in 2 days. However, if you drive only brief trips and only occasionally, then it may not get fully recharged. The best thing to do would be to get a small battery tender and clip that on the battery while the car is idle. To sort out a problem like this requires using a clamp on amp meter and checking each branch of the circuitry from the battery onwards, and looking for the offending section. One can do some of that with pulling fuses, but in the Prius there are quite a few of the ECU's that are supplied by non-removable fuses, and thus require using said clamp on amp meter.
Sorry, amp! There are no aftermarket accessories and SKS is off. I drive to work and back which is about 10 miles total. But this started years ago when I was driving plenty far--250 miles a week average.
Daisy - even a few hundred miles a week is not enough to fully top off the battery unless it was done in a single trip, and even then it might not be enough if the drain back then was as significant as it is now. Good luck finding the source of the drain.
Normal quiescent current drain is 0.02A compared to your car at 0.19A. My guess is that a relay is stuck. As previously stated, it is necessary to use an ammeter to determine which fused circuit has the excess current drain, then look downstream from that point (with reference to the electrical wiring diagram) to see what components source power from that fuse. Then examine each component to determine its current drain. That is a time consuming process but should not take five days. At this point you could reasonably question whether the garage staff has the technical ability to locate the problem. You may need to have the 12V battery fully-charged, then move on to a more capable shop.
Guess what? The car had a third party add-on that I never knew about! A GPS anti-theft tracker. I bought the car with 5K on it and had no idea it was there. The big question is, did the dealer know? They are fully aware of my battery issues. Anyway, the garage here found it and I am happy but also $400.00 poorer. If the device was installed by the dealer, what responsibility do they have for the cost of my annual new batteries (4 in 4 years) not to mention the money I just spent? Sheesh.
It may have been installed as a tracking device, assuming the purchaser was "unreliable". Some cars are equipped with "shutdown" devices that can disable the car if the purchaser didn't show up to make the weekly payment.
The first owner bought two Priuses--the 2nd one was for her husband. He preferred his pick-up so she was selling his. The dealer actually set me up with the original owner since they had no Priuses available ( remember those days in 2004?)
