I own a 2010 Honda CRV. I have had the charging system checked out 5 or 6 times in the last year and every thing is fine. Every morning I wake up to a dead battery. I charge it and it is fine for most of the day while it is being driven, but the next morning, I will have a dead battery again. I have replaced the battery 5 times in the last year (at no cost to me). What is the problem??

 

Parasitic drain.

 

Parasitic drain?? Could you expound on that?? What specifically might it be?? What components on the car?? Would appreciate your help. Thanks.

 

 

Thank you very much.

 

Sometimes one of the diodes in the output of an alternator become leaky (allow some electric current to flow in the wrong direction). Usually this happens because the vehicle was used to jump start an other vehicle and when that was done the good vehicle had the engine running to cause the alternator to put out power. When the alternator puts out too much current while the load of the bad vehicles starter is starting it the flow of too much current damages one or more of the output diodes of the alternator.

To test of this is the problem, with a known good charged battery in the vehicle, disconnect the battery + connection, then disconnect the wires to the alternator, and temporally tape them so they can not short to anything, then reconnect the + wire of the battery and let it sit overnight.

The next day, disconnect the + wire again, reconnect the alternator, and reconnect the + wire of the battery. Now see if the vehicle will start. If it does it means that disconnecting the alternator prevented the parasitic drain on the battery, and the alternator is bad. If this is the case, a good alternator rebuild shop can replace the bad output diode of a relatively low cost, compared to buying a new alternator.

 

I got it fixed. It was the passenger side electric window switch. Thanks.