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Ok, so I did the parasitic draw test. Left right front door open, trunk open, glove box open, and removed the glovebox light. Manually "locked" the door and trunk and in addition to that locked them from remote as well. Then disconnected negative battery cable, and wired my multimeter between negative battery terminal and negative cable. For first 10-15 minutes the draw was 640mA, then after 15 minutes the draw rose up to 10A!! and then quickly fell down to 250mA. It stayed at 250mA for 45 minutes and then I ended the test. During this test i used electric test pen to see which fuses were active at trunk fusebox and in the glovebox. Allmost all of the fuses were active. In the trunk only numbers 60,61,62,63 and 82 were without power. In the glovebox only fuse number 34 was without power. I was surprised how many of the fuses were active? Does anybody have a clue what that is?
Those current values are all indicative of a car that's not going to sleep properly (quick check is to look at the indicator light by the gearshift lever).
You're really going to have to test the individual circuits to find where the current is going. That can be done by pulling fuses one at a time until the current drain drops to reasonable levels, or by measuring the (very small) voltage drops across the fuses, and then using a chart to calculate what kind of current those voltage drops indicate. Lots of threads on those processes.
A total aside, I had two current drain issues with my 2006 E61 (Touring). One was a flaky rear glass release switch that would intermittently pop the glass, turning on the interior lights (always happened when I couldn't see the car and/or in daylight). The other was from a Bluetooth OBD "dongle" that I used with my Torque Pro app. Something about having it plugged in caused the car to intermittently not go to sleep properly.
Today I started going through fuses individually with multimeter checking current, but it turned out my multimeter had too big scale and it was quite impossible to get reliable readings. Amps on each fuse fluctuated from 0 to 100 milliamps all the time. Tomorrow I will go and buy some more precise multimeter that can really measure small currents. I am glad my car still starts so far and I am able to drive it when I need to. Every day spending hour or two with figuring the problem out so I hope I will eventually find it. It's interesting project indeed, and I will update here if I find out what's the problem finally. I have decided to tackle this problem myself and take it as a learning process because I am not an expert with car electronics.
FWIW, when my E61 was acting up, I bit the bullet and bought a clamp-on meter capable of doing DC amps with the clamp (careful - the vast majority of clamp-on multimeters will only do AC amps with the clamp, and DC amps with the leads). That's nice because you can clamp it around any group of wires you suspect are carrying the excess current, instead of having to disconnect cables to use a wired ammeter (which usually blow an internal fuse when something draws over 10 amps).
Even better, the one I got has a remote app that lets you monitor it via a smartphone (so you can really close up the car and monitor when / if it goes to sleep - it even draws a graph to show you the current drain over time).
I think I should consider bying a better muiltimeter and especially with modern cars it is very useful to be able to close the car fully. That one you recommended seems to be reasonably priced! Today I was actually about to buy new multimeter, since I thought something was wrong with my cheap multimeter, but i noticed i had blown both fuses on it I don't know how and when. It must have been long time since i use it very rarely. Im glad i spotted that before investing into a 50€ multimeter and ended bying a pack of fuses for 2€ instead.
BUT I managed to catch one fuse red handed in the trunk fuse box. It was fuse number 89 controlling instrument illumination, telephone and audio system. Now I have surrounded the problem to a smaller area. I can hear a very, very faint squeaking and hissing sound coming at least from the front door small speakers next to the door handle. I have to dig into this possible culprit more.
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Edit: I found my cars own fuse map. It says that fuse 89 is for Sequential gearbox "Sequentielles schaltgetriebe" , for luggage compartment fan "Gepäckraumlüfter" and for telephone. My car is automatic so i assume, that this fuse would be used for the transmission only in cars with manual transmission so my quess is now the luggage compartment fan. I have never known that exists in my car so tomorrow I will take a look. What is your opinion? Fusebox.info said it would be for a lot more (small photo).
Last edited by Wright Flyer; 02-06-2024 at 03:50 PM.
02-04-2024, 03:25 PM
. I have decided to tackle this problem myself and take it as a learning process because I am not an expert with car electronics.
I don't know how and when. It must have been long time since i use it very rarely. Im glad i spotted that before investing into a 50€ multimeter and ended bying a pack of fuses for 2€ instead
