Another new battery drained within 3 weeks

Being so new I didn't. I will. Also, I should have made it clearer in my post, this is my 2nd Toyota battery if it wasn't clear.

 

It's certainly was not driven every day due to working from home, to this point could it have sat longer than three weeks....Maybe. I can't honestly say; I just know for sure it was at least because I was not at home where the truck was.... In hindsight I wish I knew. regardless my draw is pretty high from what I understand. Thanks

 

Interesting. I had a independent put this one in as it's way cheaper than the dealer. However, my local dealer also uses Viper. I'll have to check OPs suggestion that maybe the Viper has a flashing light, but the truck was not locked so that should not be it, but Will check that tomorrow.

 

Had a similar occurrence with my old Ranger. Seems the mandatory immobilizer that I had to add to install conflicted with at that time was a compustar system. Took it back to the gov’t install depot 3 times & they still didn’t get it right.

 

Just throw a tender on it for long periods of time.

 

Likely something draining the battery. I had a vehicle that did this, traced it back to the drivers side power seat draining the battery. The fix was simple, but finding the source was expensive. I would fix the issue, rather than keeping a charge on it.

 

Fixing the issue is a must in that you might leave your vehicle at a trailhead for a week and then it won’t start. Not acceptable

 

Had a similar problem with my 2019 OR. Working from home more than normal, my truck now sits for a week or week and half without starting. With the temps dropping it was turning over slow and even left me stranded. Had to get a jump start and put on a 2A/15A charger when I got home.

Next evening I put a Battery Tender Plus on it over night to top it off. Next morning LED was still red and charging. Removed negative lead and put multimeter in line and made sure doors were shut and hood is completely down. Found I had draw of .120 amps 30 minutes after walking away. Something was drawing faster than the Battery Tender could charge.

I Found my Dash Cam was drawing my battery down after several days of sitting. It has switched + and constant + for parking lot mode. Disconnected my dashcam, put Battery Tender Plus back on over night and next morning LED was green and fully charged. Left dashcam unplugged for now and no issues starting. Starter turns over normal again. Going to connect dashcam back to switched + only and not use parking lot mode.

Per Eric the car guy, anything over .050 amps is too much parasitic draw. Good video. Good Luck. Use a couple small C-Clamps or vice grips to hold the meter leads on the battery post and battery cable so you can close the hood and leave the meter hang outside the engine compartment by the front grill.

 

Reviving this thread to let you know that with the Tacos 78ma parasitic draw I went dead in a week in this cold. I went and bought an AGM battery and will try to figure out more on the draw this summer. In the mean time I may consider installing a disconnect if the AGM doesn't do me better. This is my second Toyota battery and it showed 9volts telling me a potential bad cell. A jump pack wouldn't even start the truck. I just ditched it at Batteries Plus as I don't have time or warmth to mess with it.

 

disconnect ANY crap you added electrical wise and see how it does.
then re adding things one by one and reading any draw will show you the culprit

 

You cold shrunken nut fellas should put a capacitor in parallel with the battery. Huge amps, cold or hot. Mine has started with less than 8 volts. Lot less stress on the battery as well. Although it barely gets to freezing where I am. I have a capacitor under the hood that's sorta "in parallel' with Lifepo4 battery under back seat.

 

I do not have a 78ma parasitic draw. Initially I do have a small draw, but after 15 minutes with the doors shut and hood down and latched, the draw goes to 0. I did notice if I left the hood up or not latched, there is a constant draw that doesn't go away.

Update to my situation: I have a DDPAI Mini 3 dashcam. What I discovered was my phone app for the dashcam did an update, which in turn pushed new firmware to the camera itself. The phone connects via a direct wifi connection to the cam and I did not realize this had happened. When I logged into the cam settings, I found the firmware had changed the parking lot mode from "hibernate" to "24hr on before hibernate". Essentially every time I shut off the truck, the camera stayed on for another 24 hrs. Connected everything back the way it was with the setting now on immediate hibernate and haven't had an issue since.

Good luck, as mentioned earlier start disconnecting anything you added 1 at a time and hopefully you can narrow it down.

 

https://youtu.be/lRcj1fQcWwU
Fastest way to find a parasitic draw

 

I like this I wish I didn't have to hang upside down to do this for the cab fuses LOL. Thanks for this.

 

THAT is the critical question. Without a baseline from other 3rd gen owners using an inline ammeter or a clamp meter, everything else is just speculation.

Other owners, please chime in: What's your current measured parasitic drain?

 

While not Tacoma specific, Toyota's generic procedure for parasitic draw says less than 50mA. Procedure is attached and is dated Aug 20 so it's recent. Note that you have to latch the hood lock and wait up to 2 hours for all modules to go to sleep. I've had my Taco sit for several weeks and still had 12.3 volts at the battery.

 

That's about 37% discharged at STP. That seems high, but could be totally normal for newer, more "electronified" vehicles. Thanks for the datapoint!

 

It was right at a month so at that rate it'd be good for longer than I better going without taking it out to play.

 

with it being cold as shit everywhere you might be hard pressed to get any resonses on this immediately. Ill be happy to chime in this weekend or when it get warmer

 

It would be appreciated!