Pajero Owners Club of South Africa

Hi All. Hope you can help with this conundrum. Purchased a 2012 3.2 Exceed in December and loving it. Car has a ghost though. Every now and then the (brand new) battery (Duracell 95 Ah SAB 650 S) is drawn down to below 12 V after standing for as little as 1,5 to 2 days. Does not happen every time. Took the car to the Mitsu advised autolec in town. After 2 days was called to collect, no fault. Same weekend battery again drawn down. So I started to You-tube and discovered 'parasitic battery drain test'. When I did this test, the reading would be 0.01-0.03 A (10-30 milliamp) which from what I have read is normal. Apparently anything up to 50 mA is considered acceptable for a modern car with electronics that have to remain on. By this time I was going nuts, could not measure the drain, but battery was loosing voltage in hours (12.7 V to 11.9 in 18 h). I then came across a little device on Takealot and acquired it immediately, the Battery Monitor (R580). Size of a match box with two wires. Connected it to my battery and can then get a reading of the voltage via a blue tooth signal. Now I could finally see what was going on without popping the hood. I was now able to detect when the battery was 'bleeding' and when it was not. My hope was that when I caught it in bleeding mode, I could measure the current drain. However, each time it was between 10 and 30 milliamps. Finally I tried doing the test without breaking the circuit. Normally I would remove the negative terminal and connect my multimeter (set to 10 A) between the battery neg pole and the loosened negative terminal. After doing this test you would have to reset the radio, clock etc. In one of the You-tube videos they address this issue by deftly connecting the multimeter without breaking the circuit. I tried this, and voila! 1.2 A current drainage - finally. I then set about pulling fuses to see which circuit was responsible. I had to repeat this about 3 times (long story), but finally narrowed it to the 2 connected fuses in the large fuse box under the hood. You cant remove either of them, they are in a type of box on the fuse box, but can be disengaged, not removed, together. When I pulled these up, the drainage at 1.2 A would remain, but when I dropped them back in, the current drain would decrease to 10-30 milliamps. I am too doff to know what this means, but since fiddling with this fuse I have not been able to get the old goat to go back into parasitic drain mode. Lets hope ignorance and desperation have won the day. Would be interested in any thoughts, advice.

You never did mention what those two fuses were for ?

Hi John293.
Thanks for taking a look. From what I can gather the 2 linked fuses (in the big fuse box next to the battery) are fuses #17 10A (Audio system, cigarette lighter and clock ) and #18 15A (A/C, audio system, central locking, clock, ESP electronic control unit, interior lamps, multifunction control unit 1, transfer case control unit). I got these designations online, so could be incorrect (https://fuse-box.info/mitsubishi/mitsub ... 2015-fuses). On the inside of the fuse box lid #17 simply has a music note and #18 a light symbol. I switched the cabin interior lights to OFF, just as a precaution - no change.

More info not in my original post. The car has an aftermarket radio with BT and rear camera which I had to have fixed by an audio dealer to enable the steering controls to work. I did not mention this as the problem pre-dates this repair. During my discussions with the audio guys I mentioned the battery problem and they promised to look at possible sources. Lo and behold they found an old Tracker and removed it. This was a happy day as I was sure the battery issues were over. Sadly they were not. In a subsequent discussion with an Autolec, he told me his record was 5 trackers in an old model Jetta. The data from the battery logger does not indicate to me that another old Tracker unit is present. I suspect that when the on-board battery in such a Tracker needs to recharge itself, it draws from the vehicle battery. I would thus expect to see the voltage go from a stable reading to drop at a greater pace should this be taking place. I am not seeing this. Unfortunately I am not able to upload one of these diagrams to show you what I am seeing, will see if I can figure out how. I am sure it will help someone in the know to better understand.

Hi Maui

Tracking devices are a necessary evil in my experience.