Earth Leak.

I've got a 1.8 with a major short to earth (on top of HGF :/), any guesses on the circuit that may be at fault before I start pulling fuses?

Dunno what to suggest for Freelander, but my son's Rover 220 Coupe just sufferred the same sort of short leading to the battery draining overnight. It turned out to be the stereo. He had fitted it about a year earlier, but for what ever reason developed a 'leak'.

Mine was the rear wiper, if I turned the ignition off with it part way across the screen it didn't park and would drain the battery. Bit of lubrication and some fiddling soon had it happy

Unplug the alternator

always put the radio/cd player back onto radio as if you leave it on cd it takes it out on the battery , but in this case I would suspect it either could be alternator shorting or possible battery , if you battery is old what happens is bits of lead gather on the bottom and short it out if you give it a shake it will cure it tempory
but best get a new one asap.

Everything apart from the lights as far as iI know is only live with the ignition.
I'll start pulling the fuses under the bonnet first and see how I go on.

i had problems with mine one day it would start ,the next not , then be ok for a couple of days then fail to start again ,had everything checked all showed ok , about a week later i could smell sulphur opened the bonnet smoke pouring from the breather pipe on battery replaced it no more problems since .it appears the battery was at fault all a long .

bushwwacker said:

Everything apart from the lights as far as iI know is only live with the ignition.
I'll start pulling the fuses under the bonnet first and see how I go on.

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Think you'll find there's actually quite a bit more that is live - eg the alarm, locking etc. Of course the ignition switch is often accused of being dodgy on Freelander's - so it could be anything!

On my sons car I took each fuse out in turn and put a multi meter across the terminals to find out which one it was.

As far as I know, the standard acceptable key-off current drawn from the battery of a modern car is 50 mA. Any more than this is considered parasitic draw.

A standard multimeter with DC current setting can be set to 10A scale, then placed in series with (between) battery negative and the removed negative clamp. Before you do this, run the back window all the way down, otherwise it will activate when you connect the meter and possibly draw enough current to blow the fuse in the meter.

Connect up the meter, and allow the car to settle for a minute before reading the current - some cars fiddle around for a while before settling. If the current is more than 50 mA (0.05 A), start pulling fuses until the culprit is found.

Don't forget that opening the driver's door to get to the fuse box will switch on the interior light, which could mimic a parasitic draw. Consider taping the door switch 'shut'.

Difficult to tape the door switch on a Freelander as it's part of the lock
Just leave the door open. After 5 minutes, the CCU shuts the interior lights off. Don't close the driver's door or open any of the others or the interior lights come on again. Make sure your multi meter is connected before letting the lights time out.

QUOTE="tyrefitter, post: 3693522, member: 104747"]i had problems with mine one day it would start ,the next not , then be ok for a couple of days then fail to start again ,had everything checked all showed ok , about a week later i could smell sulphur opened the bonnet smoke pouring from the breather pipe on battery replaced it no more problems since .it appears the battery was at fault all a long .[/QUOTE]
Ive got the battery it came with and a month old one, neither one will hold enough charge to open the windows if left connected over night.
I'm struggling for time at the moment with my lunacy and tiling the bathroom on top of everything else.

It looks like pulling fuses and relays, hopefully it'll be straight forward to trace with it draining the battery from 11.36V to 5.6V inside 12 hours.

Nodge68 said:

Difficult to tape the door switch on a Freelander as it's part of the lock

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Oops!

I haven't done this draw test on a FL, only on my wife's old Peugeot 306. That did have tape-able door switches.

Anyway, the principle is, don't mistake your interior light for a parasitic draw. As Nodge says, wait till the light shuts off before hooking up the meter, in case you blow its fuse.

Has been said, but do remember if you pull a fuse that cuts the power to that circuit. When you put your multimeter across the terminals that then powers it again and depending on what it is it may go through a startup sequence - eg CCU but lots of other things as well. So if your multimeter shows a decent current - give it plenty of time to go back to idle. Even if you find one drawing current - carry on with the others as well. It should be obvious which is causing it, but testing them all gives you the complete picture.

I'm sure it is probably better to run the multimeter on the battery terminal as pulling the fuses will be done when they should be at "idle" - so you don't have to worry about that - although you'll then see a hike when you plug it back in. I couldn't get this to work properly though (forget why - may have just been cos the meter was in the engine bay and my head was in the drivers footwell!) and went to checking each fuse.

Your problems will probably start when you've identified which circuit it is and then need to identify which part of it is stuffed! Hopefully its nice and simple like on my son's car.

GrumpyGel said:

may have just been cos the meter was in the engine bay and my head was in the drivers footwell!

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I seem to remember I got around this by putting the multimeter face down on the windscreen so I could see it from the inside. I might have extended the leads a bit too.