battery drain

I am confused about a 12 volt drain.
I noticed that when I hook my multimeter to bat neg and to neg cable I had a 12 volt reading. I unhooked all components and drain dropped to .1 v. I attached my radio and had 12v drain, Unhooked it and attached depth finder-12v drain. unhooked DF and attached GPS-12volt reading. All components were off position.
Am I doing something wrong? I just don't know how to proceed.

I sure could use some help/guidence.
Thanks FB

Re: battery drain

mygrady said:

I am confused about a 12 volt drain.
I noticed that when I hook my multimeter to bat neg and to neg cable I had a 12 volt reading. I unhooked all components and drain dropped to .1 v. I attached my radio and had 12v drain, Unhooked it and attached depth finder-12v drain. unhooked DF and attached GPS-12volt reading. All components were off position.
Am I doing something wrong? I just don't know how to proceed.

I sure could use some help/guidence.
Thanks FB

Click to expand...

Sorry, but I do not have a clue what you are trying to communicate. When you measure drain, are you measuring the volatge downstream from the switch? If so, this is a bogus reading and is meaningless. Typically, "off" drain should be measured with a milliamp meter or even a microamp meter, not with a voltmeter. However, to measure drain current, you must break the circuit and insert the meter in the line. If you are not comfortable doing this, I would get someone who is to help you. If you screw this up, you could do some damage to something (hopefully, just a fuse on the meter, but maybe something worse.)

What makes you think you have a drain issue on your battery?

TerryMSU

Re: battery drain

OK. I think that I was chasing a non issue. For some reason I thought I had a dead short. When I checked the amp draw, it was .1.
I was seeing 12 volts on each component when I connected each to the fuse block but .1amp was actual.
Thanks

Re: battery drain

May want to explain how you are measuring things. Are you trying to measure voltage or current?

Easiest way to measure current is to lift off one of the battery leads and put your multimeter between the battery amd the removed lead and measure with the current setting on your meter.

Re: battery drain

looks like you removed the negative lead and put the volt meter between the lead and the battery post and read 12v when every thing was meant to be turned off....what you are reading is the memory circuits in the units you unplugged these are active when the unit like gps etc is turned off as they reduce the use of the built in battery inside the unit. this could be as low as or 1 ma or less. the bleed is so small it shouldnt drain a double A in a month but the meter can read it as its electrical pressure. the guys are pointing out you need to read electical flow which is amps. on a fused meter hook the meter in line and see how many amps are flowing and post back if you think you have a problem.

Re: battery drain

all is good.Thanks to all