Dabber2024

Hi Jocko, cant say i enjoy electrics on cars myself, ive always been terrible at them, even struggle with wiring in a car radio ! lols Im fearless when it comes to mechanical things to the extent ive done a couple of engine transplants in my time but electrics have been a bane in my life . Ive just been looking up how to read my multimeter and understand what the ranges signify and therefore what the reading unit would be ! thats how little they taught us on electrics in my school . Ive just been out and measured things again. So, measured voltage between the neg terminal and the neg battery lead and it was 12.28 v Also measure the amps between the neg terminal and the neg lead, started on the 200mA and got no reading, 20mA got 001 reading, range set on 2mA got 0.01 then set the range on what i think is 200micro amps and got nothing. The attached picture is an image of the ranges on my multimeter the range in red is the one i am thinking is micro amps but I can be sure. The reading in the 2mA range of 0.01, is that .01 of a milliamp then ? From what you said earlier i would not have got any voltage across the fuses unless A: I had turned the ignition on and probably had the engine running AND B: something on the other side of the fuse was shorting to earth and pulling a flow of electricity ? is that right ? Cheers

So, taking on board the possibility of one or two duff batteries I have charged my slave battery overnight having done some testing on the old battery yesterday. All battery charging is taking place using a FOXSUR 3 IN 1 12V 24V Touch Screen LCD Pulse Repair Battery Charger Motorcycle Car Automatic Intelligent For Lithium Battery Lead-Acid Agm Gel Wet LiFePO4 Batteries, I have had good results with these pulse chargers in terms of "fixing" batteries and most importantly these pulse chargers will start charging a battery regardless of how low the battery voltage has been. I make this statement as some so called modern "intelligent" chargers from Lidl/Aldi/Halfords/ wherever, have got to be so intelligent that they refuse to charge a battery unless it is carrying a charge of approx 6 volts in it prior to you putting the leads into it, needless to say this is useless to us DIY guys as then we cant charge a very flat battery unless we "trick" the charger into thinking the battery has a high enough voltage to get the charger to kick in the charging process. I have read an interesting post where a guy goes into the guts of an Aldi charger and fits an override switch that enables the user to trigger the charger to charge a totally flat or low battery regardless but honestly why were they built like this in the first place !. MY other "old school" chargers simply start charging regardless of the battery voltage as you would expect of stuff built properly with the user in mind. The link below is the one I have, it was cheap, it covers 12 and 24 volt, it covers all normal battery types and I would recommend as perfect for DIYers. https://uk.banggood.com/FOXSUR-3-IN-1-12V-24V-Touch-Screen-LCD-Pulse-Repair-Battery-Charger-Motorcycle-Car-Automatic-Intelligent-For-Lithium-Battery-Lead-Acid-Agm-Gel-Wet-LiFePO4-Batteries-p-1707984.html?akmClientCountry=GB&a=1734803190.9465&cur_warehouse=CN Rant over My testing yesterday comprised leaving the battery negative lead off the night before hoping all the systems would then goto sleep. As stated before the fuse for the wiper motor had been put into fuse 25 (a slot with no terminals in it) when it should have been in slot 26 so I switched this. The ignition is off and drivers door and bonnet locks have been "tricked" to show as closed to the cars brain. I had opened the drivers door with the key initially so in theory the car has had no cause to "wake up" I then checked the voltage drain from the negative battery lead to the negative battery terminal, its was 12.6 volts. I then checked the 3 fuses and the 5 cables in the positive terminal battery box by unscrewing the retaining nuts and removing the cable ends whilst watching the voltage meter to see if the drain fell. The pic shows cable 1 being tested in this way, there was no change to the voltage drain. I then connected the negative lead to the terminal and put my voltage meter onto the positive side, I took the positive side fusebox off the main power lead itself and check between the main power lead (the thick one that goes to the starter) and the positive terminal, there was no drain. I then tested between the terminal and the positive terminal battery box, the drain re-appeared at the 12.6volts. So whatever is drawing power is coming through the fuse box. Not much I know but its all the black arts to me I did try to check between the individual cables in the positive terminal fusebox and the fusebox itself and found low voltage draw down cables 6,5 & 4 (reading from the right and ref the Haynes) these being 6 Power steering control module, 5 Cooling fan control unit, glow plug control unit, or cooling fan control unit & 4 Starter headlights. Im a bit confused how the draw through these cables does not equate to the 12.6 volts draw I was seeing at the negative terminal measurement from earlier so I shall redo them with the slave battery soon. At that point I reassembled the cables etc and went to to lock the car only for the car to be totally dead....I mean nothing, nada, zip, at this point I am thinking the worst and that somehow I have now b*ggered the whole thing with my hamfisted tinkering. My wife advises I go to bed or come shopping with her. Next day I plunked the now fully charged slave battery onto the system and took the battery that came with the car into the house to charge. When I opened the car it seems I had left the negative terminal on the system and the battery was dead therefore once again the car systems should have all gone to sleep, so I tricked the drivers door and the bonnet latches into the closed position again and proceeded to check for current draw at the negative lead and terminal and found I was drawing next to nothing !!! This surprised me until I noticed that in my tired haste refitting the cables in the positive terminal fusebox I had placed cable 2 onto the "blank" terminal threaded stud which is situated in the gap between studs 1 and 2. DOH !! so I placed cable 2 back where it should be and suddenly the car was back to normal and the locks and lights etc all came on ok, praise the lord. This cable 2 (SA2 on wiring diagrams) is listed in the Haynes as being "80 amp Fusebox in engine compartment Starter x contact relief" does anyone have a translation for what thats supposed to mean for christs sake ! As it happens nealry all the circuits start with this damn cable so that explains why the ignition and everything had no power ! Back to square one sort of. So now i decided to perform a drop test on the battery to make sure it was good. I untricked all the locks and closed. locked and opened the car doors an bonnet to ensure everything should be normal. I connected the volt meter across the terminals using my extension cables so I could sit in the cab and start the car whilst also seeing the voltage drop, voltage was 12.93 volts prior to ignition. From the footage i recorded the voltage drops to 10.23 volts and then rapidly climbs again when i turn the key, so thats a pass in my book. At this point i noticed that the alternator was running and providing a healthy 14v to the battery so thats something else ticked off. Most other websites advise your battery should not drop lower than 9.7 volts upon ignition. In the event you do get a sub 9.7v drop this would indicate that one or more battery cells have "dropped" and are not holding charge. A recent site i read told me that the 6 cells in the battery carry approx 2.13v each so when you see a reading thats a multiple of 2.13 in your battery you can be sure its a knackered cell Drop test over on the slave battery, will redo this test on the battery from the car itself tomorrow when its been repaired and charged. So at this point I moved onto checking the fusebox in the drivers footwell. Ignition off. With the battery all connected up properly I went through all the fuses touching all the test points on the top of the fuse bodies to see if any of them were carrying a current - none of them were. I then removed each fuse in turn and checked the fuse for continuity between the blades of the fuse, all the fuses showed continuity ( the current passed through the fuse successfully) indicating they were all good. I then turned on the AC as the seller had previously mumbled something about it maybe not working a bit like mumbling about the rear wiper not working...fortunately the AC seems to blow cold. I should really have checked fuse 22 to see if it was carrying voltage at the time , oh well. So basically I am still thinking the battery is discharging when the engines not running. So back to the battery and undo the negative lead from the battery terminal again and measure the current drain in mA.... NOTHING !!!! (well 0.002) I cant believe it......Hold on though now lets not go mental i think. I turned the dial to test for the voltage between the negative terminal and the negative lead and its still 12.8v flowing back into the battery. So i turn the dial back to test for current flow to double check and I seem to be getting 0.016 mA on the 20mA range of my meter. Ive left the car alone for a bit , with the negative lead attached. Im going back out to check it now to see what the current draw is now.

Hey Jocko, thanks for the info, your fusebox is slightly different to mine as its a petrol from 2009, according to the Haynes manual Section 12 page 46 you have a fusebox that was installed upto Feb 2010, like mine the fusebox is the same body as the LHD version merely rotated 180 degrees clockwise so fuse 1 is bottom rh micro fuse and fuse 24 is topleft of the micro fuse rows. Like mine you seem to have empty slots and the slots themselves are missing the metal jaws inside the plastic holder implying that when the car was build these fuse slots were never required to be filled. As you see from my attached 1.6 tdi fabia elegance built aug 2011 I also have slots missing the metal jaws and I am going to suggest there should not be fuses in these slots. According to my haynes however as my car was built in aug 2011 there should be a fuse for the radio in fuse 1 for the radio, as you can see I dont have this. Also haynes says i have a fuse in slot 2 for the Starter relay OR not used on other websites it says this is the "start-stop" fuse whatever thats supposed to mean. Fuse 6 is supposed to be the Reversing lights cornering lights or Reversing lights according to Haynes, as I dont have this fuse in place im going to suggest my reversing lights go through fuse 21 (which I do have) and according to the Haynes is also for Reversing lights Or Reversing lights Cornering lights. Frankly the variety of changes in the fabia fuse layout and options as to which fuse does what is a mess in my view and I have worked with enough engineers to know how it should be done, the end user has not really been considered. Now that I have established I cant trust the haynes to tell me exactly which fuse holes should have fuses in, given that my radio works and fuse 1 is empty ! I am assuming the radio is coming through fuse 17 (which i have) or fuse 50 (which i have). So im going to run through some tests and see what happens.

Hi everyone, welcome to my first post regarding our fabia (Mavis). So, we bout this tdi 1.6 fabia to become our run around but when I bought it the rear wiper was not working and the seller made some noises about the battery needing replacing as well. When i got it home i noticed the battery in it looked very new, it is a NAPA 60 AMPH battery, so not the original I suspect as thats a 61amph according to the book. The next morning I came out to start it and the battery was flat, dead flat, so i bunged a fully charged old battery on it (old but serviceable as i use it as a slave on another vehicle). I then got the multi meter on it between the positive battery lead and the positive terminal on the battery and found a 11.45v , 180.7 mA current drain with all services turned off. which is a massive drain. So my immediate thoughts are that the seller was aware of the drain but has not diagnosed the reason, instead they have charged the battery and only connected the leads on the morning of the sale. Next I searched for possible fabia current drain reasons and it seems there are many options so I am now looking at checking through the fuses,,and now I find that in fact the reason the rear wiper was not operating was that the fuse was missing from the fusebox under the steering wheel, in fact the fusebox had not been put back on quite right ( hmmm evidence of tampering). Additionally i am thinking that some fuses are missing and /or incorrect amperage. As soon as I put the fuse back in the wiper started working and I am thinking theres fuses in slots for things this car doesnt have. Now heres my problem.. In order to start to correctly diagnose which fuses are drawing power when engine is turned off I need to know the proper and full fuse layout for this 1.6 TDI skoda fabia elegance. Skoda helpline is telling me the car was manufactured 30 Aug 2011 and registered 17th Nov 2011 so I am looking in my haynes manual and going with the "Fusebox in passenger compartment as of 05-2011" I shall start comparing photos and the book but if anyone has a photo of a correct fusebox that would be very helpful I know these current drain problems are a nightmare and I want to be as well equiped with info before I start pulling fuses etc. thanks in advance

Well folks, I traded in my trust 1.9 octavia estate over 10 years ago and I have regretted it ever since....so finally I have purchased a 2011 fabia tdi in bright yellow and am hoping once I've got the parasitic battery drain fixed it will get my stepdaughter and my wife to school for the next 3 years...I'm excited to be fixing things again as I have done a lot of motor repair over the years..lets see what happens 😀