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Battery parasitic drain

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Suffering battery drain at the moment, dont think the battery is faulty as system is drawing 2 amps when everything is shut down. Battery holds charge when disconnected. Alternator pushing 14.3V when charging. Are there any known common reasons on 2011 Fabia that can cause this please?

I had this issue with a 2009 SEAT Ibiza 1.4 16V, at that point in time, there had been issues with a few cars, typically cars with the 1.4 16V petrol engine, the root cause ended up being an error or issue with the coding of the BCM (Body Control Module), that is the controller that forces power users to sleep when the engine is switched off - and many other functions.

Getting a SEAT dealership to accept what I had worked out it must be, was tricky as visibility of this issue, by 2016/2017 had been lost at dealership level, so a request for help to locate the patch was lodged by my second SEAT dealership to SEAT mothership - that sorted out that problem.

Before you try chasing that down, maybe disconnect the alternator output lead and insulate it, just in case your problem is a leaky rectifier stack - or other alternator issues.

Many many other possible wiring issues or component issues can also cause this sort of thing, it seems that any electrical noise within the car wiring, will tend to wake up sleeping controllers even if the BCM S/W is okay.

I know how annoying it can get when going out to the car after 3 or 4 days and not knowing if it will start, I was lucky as it was a spare car at the time, but it was still blinking annoying and I couldn't just live with it!

That second SEAT dealership had just had to sort out a similar aged VW Polo 1.4 16V with that issue - which was lucky for me otherwise I might have had to give up on it!

  • 2 weeks later...
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Hav just pulled the main ecu fuse and checked current draw, it drops from 2.66A to 0.9A with fuse pulled. Not tried alternator suggestions yet, but will do that this week.

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