Parasitic Draw after accident.

About a year ago somebody ran a stoplight, sideswiped my wife, and spun her around about 90 degrees, slamming her into the front grill into another truck. I think that is where the problem with a parasitic drain on my battery started, but it would take a while before the drain would wear my newish battery down and become noticeable to me. My 2017 Tacoma wouldn't keep a charge when the battery load became too weak to start normally. The battery had an 84 month warranty and I had it about 36 months. I connected my multimeter to the negative post and cable and got a parasitic drain of 0.220a, so I started pulling fuses. The fuse that dropped the 0.220a that I was getting on my meter was the ECU-B3, and that leads straight to the Main Body ECU. I went "uh- oh", that don't look easy". Fortunately, I signed up for a years subscription with AllData and downloaded the wiring diagrams on 3rd Gen Tacomas. It showed the ECU-B3 fuse in the Lighting and Horn section. That fuse could likely be other diagrams on the truck, but I decided to start with Lighting and Horn. After sleeping on it I went out the next day and did another amperage test. I made sure the door was clamped close at the switch and I disconnected the connector next to the hood latch. This is where I started to figure things out. Before I disconnected the hood connector the meter showed 0.220a and when I disconnected it, the meter still showed 0.220a. Disconnecting it should have dropped the amps on my meter(I guessed)by at least 0.125a. I then made a jumper out of a paper clip and stuck it into the female side of the connector. The amps immediately went down to 0.130a, and after about a minute, settled to 0.008amps. I was really happy because now I wouldn't have to tear off panels and disconnect things to search for something I might not ever find. I was very lucky it turned out so easy. I brought a remote battery cutoff switch and was planning on spending weeks or months trying to find it.
Does anyone else have any stories about their Parasitic Draw adventures? I'd love to hear them.

 

Nice job on the diag.

I have been pretty lucky.
Only had one issue with a draw in my life.
And I got lucky, I found it when I shut the car off at night and notice a glow from the glove box. (Trans Am)

Other than than, no issues.

 

Not really parasitic but I had I hairline short in a printed circuit once. GF’s nail polish did the trick.

 

Some folks here have had bad marriages.

Many of us have had kids in college.

Some of us have or have had motorsports addictions.

Do those count?

Being serious, someone botched a fog light install in my truck prior to my purchase. Easy to find just following sloppy wiring.

Good job on nailing yours down!

 

Not exactly a parasitic draw but it would have definitely killed my battery.
Years ago when i had my frontier I come home from work one night, shut off the truck and as i am walking to my apt i noticed my brake lights are on.
I thought it was weird, got back in the truck, made sure all lights were off, tested the brake pedal and the lights just stayed on.
I found the fuse and pulled it and they went off.
Next morning i looked into it further and found the rubber stop pad had broken and fell on the floor.
I was happy it was such an easy fix.
I think I had to replace the one for the clutch a few years later.

 

I had a red arc tow-pro? Maybe. But I never used it, one day I realized it had been vamping away. Sorry I can’t recall my revelation quite like you did, hell, I didn’t even use a voltmeter.

 

I had one in my old 04 Silverado in the dash gauge cluster. Apparently it's a huge problem with that era of GM stuff because they used some crappy solder at the factory. There's a whole cottage industry of people you can ship your cluster to who will fix it and send it back to you. I used some random person using ebay to sell that service and it came back perfect. Worked fine until I sold it several years later.

 

What year was your Firechicken?

 

1979