Battery Drain; '02 Golf

[Lib]

Hey y'all.

Ive had this car since 2011...it's had a drain somewhere for about 1.5 years now.

2 mechanics have tried to find it when its been in the shop for unrelated issues....one frequently works on TDIs, and no dice thus far.

It's had 2 batteries in it since this started- and the batteries always check out fine.

Any ideas??

How about a battery kill-switch? Recommendations for best one of those???

Thanks for your help!

 

[jokila]

Lay off the kill switch ideas. That is not solving the problem. You probably have a parasitic draw since the batteries check out.

1) how fast does it drain the battery, overnight or something much longer?
2) Do you have an ampmeter to take measurements? If you don't it is harder to figure it out, but you can at least try to narrow down the possibilities by pulling fuses and see if the problem goes away.

A common reason is swapping out the radio for an aftermarket one and leaving in the monsoon amp. If the radio is wired improperly, it will let the amp stay turned on and that will drain the battery. If that is you case, removing the fuse to the radio can let you test that scenario out.

Here is a good video done by CoolAirVW, a forum member, as goes through steps to narrow down the cause.

 

[STDOUBT]

A couple good ideas here for attempting to narrow down the component/circuit culprit.

Testing for parasitic draining of the battery?

I just had a 2 month old battery die on me; from what I was told it was a bad cell. I hope I was unlucky enough to get a bad battery, but I want to make sure something else isn't wrong. I'm getting ~12V across the terminals while off and ~14V when running, so it appears that the alternator is...

forums.tdiclub.com

Is your car stock? Any add-on do-dads like aftermarket alarms or cameras or...?
The PDF linked to in that thread looks promising. Did your mechanic run through that TSB?

 

[Lib]

1) It drains the battery in about 2-3 days of no driving if the battery is newer...about every 6-8 hours if it's happened a few times already, and/or the weather is cold. Huge pain.

2) I dont have an amp-meter. I love my TDI, and know a fair amount about cars for a woman- but this isnt a hobby of mine- and electrical issues are out of my range of car knowledge at any rate.

3) I think the radio is original, but I'm not positive. Also- why would this issue only happen after all of these years?

 

[Lib]

Pretty sure the car is stock. I'm the 2nd or maybe 3rd owner...the guy I bought it had it for several years, and I'm 90% sure he did nothing special with it aside from put it through its paces, resulting in a handful of major repairs, lol.

 

[STDOUBT]

OK, you're in Oregon. If you can't tackle this yourself, then Rich at Fix 'Um Haus is your go-to guy.
There's also oldpoopie shade tree mechanic with excellent rep.

Welcome to TDIClub!

 

[STDOUBT]

Also- why would this issue only happen after all of these years?

Some component or other goes bad. It happens.

 

[jokila]

1) It drains the battery in about 2-3 days of no driving if the battery is newer...about every 6-8 hours if it's happened a few times already, and/or the weather is cold. Huge pain.

2) I dont have an amp-meter. I love my TDI, and know a fair amount about cars for a woman- but this isnt a hobby of mine- and electrical issues are out of my range of car knowledge at any rate.

3) I think the radio is original, but I'm not positive. Also- why would this issue only happen after all of these years?

Other reasons mentioned in the video are:
1) going bad heated seat switch
2) going bad stock radio
3) going bad stock amplifier
4) alternator diodes allowing amperage leak

Why after all these years? Cuz the car is getting older. Stuff happens.

Cheap way to test the radio system? Pull the fuse to it and wait 2-3 days. You don't need mechanic experience to do that test.

 

[BobnOH]

I like the TSB referenced in Post #3. It reads worse than it is.
http://pics.tdiclub.com/data/500/TSB_27_08_04_Matrix.pdf