My car has the dual fans ,but the one on the drivers side never seams to come on and lately my battery goes dead just over night . I have been hunting for the problem all day and the only thing I have come up with is the fan on the passenger side stays on anytime the ignition is on and there is a dead short in the fan ,but the fan works and nothing gets hot. will a short in the fan drain the battery ?

 

This is just my understanding and shot at this. You might just have two unrelated things occuring at the same time. How old is your battery and how is your charging system? A short should blow a fuse. An open ground and the fan will not turn on. It sounds like the sensor in the head is bad and closing the ground. That fan turns on when the ignition is in run and the temp hits 238. The other fan turns on with the AC or at the computer programmed temp. If you leave your ignition off and the fans aren't turning then there is no load on the battery from them. You should be able to remove the ground from the battery, ignition off, and then touch it back to the battery -. There should be little to no spark-just the memory for the radio and computer is all that draws power with key out.

 

Are you using an AMMETER that shows current being drawn between your positive battery terminal and the disconnected positive battery cable when the ignition key is removed? If not, what method are you using to detect the current draw you suspect?

You could shut the ignition OFF (pull the key out), shut the doors, etc. (minimize any use of normal power) and remove each fuse you know about (one at a time) and place a small 12 volt light bulb across the removed fuse. When you find a fuse slot that lights the bulb you could investigate that circuit. There are some fuses that probably pass current when you engine is parked at night so you will have to realize there will probably be a small amount of current being drawn on a fuse such as the clock and memory for the radio channels, etc. But you might be able to find a 'group' of things to investigate.

Saturday night I left my hatch open and did not realize the light just inside the hatch was on. The next morning my 'fairly good' battery was discharged enough that the starter would not turn. So it did not take much of a load for less than 12 hours to bring the charge down too low to start the car.

Another idea is to just pull a few fuses out every night and replace them in the morning. If you can start the car in the morning after replacing those fuses then the fuses you removed were probably involved in the component(s) that is/are draining the battery.

 

I just replaced the battery friday and the alt. my car has been hacked on before I got it. I just found that the alt is warm to the touch . I am sure that is my draw but not sure why. the alt has a two wire plug and the post on the back the top wire of the plug goes to the post on back and the bottom of the plug has a wire going to the top part of the plug and the post has a wire going to the battery. Is this even close to right ? my car does charge and seems fine all day even when sitting at work most of the day it just seems to be if it sits all night.

 

Try removing the plug overnight and plug it in before you leave the house. If the car starts easily then you probably have found your current draw problem.

 

If this is the case how could the alt. be drawing

 

Look at the 4th picture on the following link.

http://www.madelectrical.com/electri...reewire2.shtml

It sounds like your alternator. It discusses it a little but it mentions there is a voltage regulator inside the alternator. Maybe that is the problem component.

Did you replace your battery because you thought it was the problem component? Did you have it tested before you purchased the new battery?

 

Hey if I understand your description I think I know your problem !!!

There are supposed to be three wires involved. There is ONE plug involved. There is one POST involved.

Now the wires are supposed to be set up as follows:

There should be a wire that goes from the POST to the positive battery terminal (or maybe a junction that contains a wire that eventually reaches the positive battery terminal). This is the wire that actually takes the 'charge' to the battery positive terminal.

There should be one wire that comes out of the connector and goes to the POST. This is a voltage sensing wire and works with the voltage regulator to set the proper voltage that is being sent out of the alternator. So it is actually SENSING the voltage at the POST and feeding that information back to the voltage regulator so that the voltage regulator can make an adjustment to get just the right output it wants to see from the alternator output.

Now this next one is where I think your problem is !!

There should be a wire that comes out of the plug and goes to your ignition system. It should receive +12 volts only when the ignition is ON.

It seems to me by your description that someone changed that wire that should go to the ignition to get +12 volts and instead they jumpered it to the +12 volts at the POST by hooking it to the 'other wire'. This would not be the factory setup. The factory setup would provide +12 volts to that wire ONLY from the ignition system.

And here is the funny part. If you took the alternator to someone for testing they would find it is working properly. It appears to me by your description that the WIRING in your car has been modified and is causing the alternator to be powered on ALL THE TIME that the battery +12 terminal is connected to the battery cable. This indeed would most likely be the source of your power drain overnight.

Now to correct this you would have to 'un-connect' the connection of the wire that should go to the ignition switch and get it routed to the ignition switch properly and with whatever resistance needs to be in line with the wire. In other words, supply the +12 volts required by that wire when the engine is running from the => ignition switch and whatever resistance is required to be in line. The question is which wire is supposed to go to the ignition switch. Once would be tempted to GUESS it is the brown wire ...

Now I prefer not to guess from my chair ! Look around that area for any harness that has a wire that was cut off or maybe a complete plug that is not plugged in anywhere. Maybe that will give you a clue. Maybe if you gave more details about what brand and model of the alternator you have and the color of wires we can figure it out or someone else can comment. But I am thinking this might not be the original alternator built into this car from the manufacturer.

 

In that link I posted for you to look at they have a picture of an alternator. On THEIR alternator it appears the bottom wire (RED) goes to the POST and the BROWN wire must go off eventually to the ignition switch. Maybe that applies in your case as well.

I think if you purchased a new alternator you would have the SAME problem because the problem exists in the WIRING coming from that plug, not the alternator.

And I think the 'short term fix' is to pull out the plug from the alternator when you are NOT using the car, ESPECIALLY over night. That SHOULD stop the drain of the battery you are experiencing. Plug it back in when you need to be using the car. The drain appears to be rather small but continous and leaving it connected overnight takes the battery too low.

I will bet this is a replacement alternator and the original alternator might have had a different connector. If you look around and find an unused connector in that area of the car that will probably contain (along with one or more other wires) the wire that goes eventually to the ignition. If so, I would suggest you install a proper alternator that was designed for that model of car (proper year and engine size, etc.) that will use the existing original alternator plug (it will then have the ignition system already PROPERLY set up).

It appears, after research on the internet, that some of these alternators that need power from the ignition circuit are actually requiring some type of resistance to be 'in line' to truly work correctly. There might NEED to be a resistive wire, gauge, light, etc. in line with the wire that comes from the ignition. So it will probably take some effort to find out just EXACTLY what needs to be installed in your car to 'do it right'. There are SO MANY things I found through Google, with no clear information, that I would NOT believe I understood this subject PERFECTLY unless I see it from the MANUFACTURER. There are all kinds of variations and mixes and manufacturers and wire colors and applications that I am glad I do not have a problem here !!! So do your homework before making a decision. Ideally you will find out EXACTLY how it was done originally on your car.

On my 1989 Camaro 305 FI Vin E (TBI) I see a 2 wire plug. Colors are RED and BROWN. However each of these wires runs into a plastic protective sheath and heads away from the alternator. So I think my RED sensing wire probably goes over to a 'wire junction' to sense the voltage at that point. That would make sense to me since it probably wants to feed back the voltage from that 'junction' to the voltage regulator. The BROWN wire most likely heads off to find the proper resistive component to pass through before being powered by the ignition system. If your system was originally the same then you might find that your plug was clipped off the original wires and thus you might find the remainder of the wire inside a plastic sheath.

 

Thanks guys that was the problem I don't have a brown wire in this area ,but I ran the bottum wire of the plug to switched power and every thing seems much better the charg rate on the guage in the dash even runs just above 13 volts now instead of around 10 volts like before I just thought the guage was wrong thanks for all the input guys

 

Well that might not be the 'ultimate' solution. What I have been reading indicates that you might very well need some type of resistance like a resistive wire, gage, or other 'thing' in line with that wire you ran to the switched voltage source. Some of the material I saw stated that if they ran directly to +12 volts with that line the system WOULD WORK but over time their system would degrade. I do not know if they meant the alternator needed to be replaced at some later point or whatever. So you should still try to find out where the wiring ORIGINALLY ran. Look in some source specifically for you make, year, model, etc. Maybe someone reading this post will point you in the direction that will give you all the information you need to be absolutely sure you will not have long term problems.

And you might also find that the original wires 'sensed' the voltage for the alternator at some type of 'wire junction' located some feet from the alternator rather than right at the alternator. This appears to be the case in my Camaro. This would impact various voltage drops related that 'wire junction'. I do not want you to regret making another 'simple fix' started by someone else at some time in the past. It is best to fix this particular problem with the correct long-term fix.

Good luck to you ... post again if you required any further changes so that others can benefit.