Battery drain or as we call it, Parasitic battery drain means something on the car is staying on and using up the battery. Which can result in the battery going flat and the car not starting. It can also damage the battery. Even a new battery can be damaged to the point of needing replacement in just a few days/weeks if it is completely drained.

 Confirming and tracing the source of the drain can be quite complex on modern cars and requires several steps to complete. Firstly we have to set the vehicle up in our workshop and connect it to our monitoring test equipment so we can see what power the car is using. We then have to put the car to sleep. This means allowing the vehicle to fully shut down to a point where only life support is required. 

 At this point we can monitor the amount of power the vehicle is using to see if there is a drain. A standard drain on a battery when the car is asleep is as little as 50mA or 0.05 Amps. Not even enough to lite up an LED.  Anything over this we then need to trace.

 Using testing procedures we can follow the power coming out of the battery through the vehicles systems to trace what is staying active and draining the battery.  In most cases we have perfected this test procedure down to 2 hours. Once completed, We then have a good idea of what’s causing the drain and what needs to be done to fix it.