Parasitic Drain

In this video, Garage Guru Mark Ingram walks you through how to properly diagnose a parasitic drain in your customer's vehicle.



For informational purposes only. We are not liable for any damages resulting from your reliance on this content.

[Shiva-ldbw]

Thanks for the perspective! I can listen to you all day my friend.

[cassioabreu]

Great training material. Thank You very much for sharing!

[chankokhoi]

This will save the time the way you teach is good 👍👍👍

[jamesjones-xxnx]

Great Way Of Teach...
Thanks More Than Much....

[dougdrefus]

its not a wake up call as you pull the fuse - its a wake up call as you plug the fuse back in. Leave the fuse out as you check draw. Just remember where you took the fuse out

[ACommenterOnYouTube]

1:30
Let me make some corrections here. Your meter is reading trickle voltage from ambient air. Tesla discovered electricity in the air, thats what the meter is picking up when your leads are exposed to open air. The potential difference between the 2 wires in the AIR ... Its not the cause of the meter, its what the meter was designed to pick up.
Next, when you touch your leads to the fuse, you are essentially SHORTING out the wires so now the meter reads 0 volts on a dead fuse. Take your leads and short them out and watch that ambient air voltage go from X to 0. With an active fuse & current flowing across it, the meter will sense the electrons flowing between those 2 points on the fuse and show it to you as a voltage differential in the milli-volt range.
But yes this is the best way to test for parasitic draw without pulling fuses to kick start something on.

[enockmakhathini]

I have got a problem on my 1989 Toyota Cressida, I performed the test as per the procedure and removed fuses one by one but the reading on my multimeter did not drop as it stayed on 12.45 ma. When I checked on the positive terminal of the battery I found that the thick white and red stripe wiring was connected directly to the positive battery terminal. I removed it and the voltage dropped to 0.03 ma.My problem is that I am wondering where must this wiring be connected then.

[lacyfurmage]

On my 73 pinto, I unhook the stereo fuse so no drain there for memory/clock, but when I do the test with the light tester, the light just barely barley comes on for like 3-4 seconds then goes out.

[Andr_]

I thought 50millamps was within specification not 25

[FelixTheGhost]

How do you measure the fuses while they're still plugged in

[snipersxxs]

I put on DC it give -11. 7 is that normal

[Karrpilot]

Good luck trying to do this check on the sealed clear plastic fuses. Or some vehicles where one has to be a circus contortionist in order to access the inside fuse block.

[pelgvzs]

Здравствуйте! Скажите пожалуйста какая марка и модель у этих токовых клещей?

[plowe]

Isn't it faster to just measure the temperature of each fuse with an infrared thermometer or an infrared camera?

[MUHAMMADKHAN-peez]

sir, if we can identify the culprit fuse(s) by multimeter, why we do need clamp meter??

[nazairetetreault]

What if yu have an intermittent draw and the fuse checks okay so yu move to test other fuse and now the fuse yu checked ok now shows the intermittent draw on the fuse that showed ok. With your way of testing yu missed the intermittent draw

[bobsue]

How do you measure voltage drop on a J style, box fuse?

[csimet]

Great tip and frankly a much better way to diagnose. Just be sure you have and use quality meters that can read well down into the mV range (and mA range) and that you test them before use to make sure they are functioning properly. Bad leads will cause you many headaches! ;)

[batkotivalio]

how about your clamp meter? Can you tell us the model and the brand.

[DANIEL-tucd]

With that multimeter you are just showing the difference before the fuse and after the fuse.the drop in voltage is because you have increased the amps in the fuse so the resistance of that fuse