Freelander 1 Battery drain

First post regarding these modern vehicles, I normally live in the rust encased world of the 3 Series!

However, my dad has a 04 plate 5 door sports Freelander and is having trouble with battery drain. It is his daly drive and yesterday he used it for work. He opened and closed the back about 4 times and used the drivers window once. Went to restart at end of day - one turn then nothing. Had to jump it.
Any ideas what could be wrong?

Alternator most probably had one of ours at work go that was on an 05 plate too.

Bad battery would be my first bet, but it could be parasitic draw.

+1 battery.
Check alternator as well. Positive Leed on alternator +, negative on an earth, should read 14_14.7v
Parasitic drain, shut all doors, turn everything off, put multimeter on 20A, remove negative cable, put positive lead on battery+, put negative on unattached negative cable, should read 0_0.5 any higher, remove fuses until you find leaking circuit. Always remove multimeter when opening doors etc when you do this.
Mike

Skinny Mike said:

+1 battery.
Check alternator as well. Positive Leed on alternator +, negative on an earth, should read 14_14.7v
Parasitic drain, shut all doors, turn everything off, put multimeter on 20A, remove negative cable, put positive lead on battery+, put negative on unattached negative cable, should read 0_0.5 any higher, remove fuses until you find leaking circuit. Always remove multimeter when opening doors etc when you do this.
Mike

Click to expand...

I had this fun last year , turned out to be the battery , but also found the rear boot light wasn't turning off all the time

got a multimeter, removed the cover off the drivers fuse box and went through each and every fuse to find the drain

fitted a larger than standard varta battery , best thing I ever bought, can leave the car 2- 3 x weeks throughout the cold weather and has plenty of power left in it

think the standard one was a 096 and I got the 110

the cd / radio has been known to cause a parasitic draw ..
it has one connection that's always live
i think the potential extra current draw has something to do with the 'cd' part
( do a site search .. has been mentioned before )
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Skinny Mike said:

+1 battery.
Check alternator as well. Positive Leed on alternator +, negative on an earth, should read 14_14.7v
Parasitic drain, shut all doors, turn everything off, put multimeter on 20A, remove negative cable, put positive lead on battery+, put negative on unattached negative cable, should read 0_0.5 any higher, remove fuses until you find leaking circuit. Always remove multimeter when opening doors etc when you do this.
Mike

Click to expand...

^^^ This is the correct procedure to test for parasitic draw. Just be aware that on reconnection of the battery the rear window will drop, drawing quite a large current. You may wish to remove the fuse for this before you start, in case it blows the fuse in your meter. Just to clarify, the acceptable 'resting' draw of a modern car is 50 mA, or 0.05 A.

If the draw is much higher than this, start pulling fuses until you find the circuit causing the excess draw. Start with the underbonnet fusebox, then put the meter against the windscreen so you can see it while pulling the driver's side fuses. Remember that opening the driver's door to get in will turn on the interior light.