P38 short in electrics

Hi

A couple of days ago the battery went flat in my 1996 2.5DT

Today I got around to getting an extension lead out and a charger attached, to my shock when I switched it on, the needle on the charger went to the back of the scale and the charger started making a very loud hum.
I am under the impression that there is something drawing a lot of current, or in fact a short circuit somewhere.

Anyone came across this before?

I've searched the forum but havent been able to find anything apart from the usual RF receiver problems which cause the battery to go flat.

bbjunkie said:

Today I got around to getting an extension lead out and a charger attached, to my shock when I switched it on, the needle on the charger went to the back of the scale and the charger started making a very loud hum.
I am under the impression that there is something drawing a lot of current, or in fact a short circuit somewhere.

Click to expand...

Isn't that what you'd expect when you connect a high-power charger to a flat battery ?

bbjunkie said:

I've searched the forum but havent been able to find anything apart from the usual RF receiver problems which cause the battery to go flat.

Click to expand...

Have you eliminated the RF receiver as being the cause of the problem ?

was the battery terminals the correct way around,i.e + red ,-black to + red,- black

i am an electrician and someone called me out before and it turned out that the actual wall double socket was wired the wrong way round in their garage they only found out when they plugged somthing into it.

failling that maybe your battery has had it and wont hold a charge,always best to dissconnect the car from the battery and then charge it,

hope any of this helps

All sorted

Battery was so flat that it was pulling a massive current from the charger when initially switched on.

I didn't want to disconnect the battery because of the horror stories I have heard about BECM failures.

I put an ammeter in line with the battery and have discovered a constant current draw of 0.525 amps and every two minutes (approx) it drops to 0.06 amps for between 2 and 20 seconds before returning to 0.525 amps.

There is an Oregon Scientific wireless weather station and a yale wireless alarm system running on the premises, so I think I will have to replace the RF unit or remove the aerial.