Current Draw from Mercury Outboard Voltage Regulator

[FloatsLikeARock]

My 2000 125 ELPTO Mercury outboard shows about one milliampere of current draw when the battery is connected to it, switch off. With the battery disconnected, the DC resistance across the hot and ground to the motor shows about 1.6 Megohms. I traced this resistance to one of the red wires on the voltage regulator and ground. The regulator seems to function fine. I was expecting infinite resistance and no current draw across the battery inputs when nothing is energized tho.

Is this normal for these solid state regulators?

 

[Chris1956]

A resistance of 1.6MOhms will allow .0000075 amps flow. Not very much current and 9 hundred thousands of a watt. Virtually nothing.

Since you are seeing 1MA (which is still nothing), either your ammeter is not accurate, or you have some very small short somewhere.

 

[ahicks]

Like the radio....

 

[FloatsLikeARock]

It's definitely the voltage regulator. I isolated the regulator from the boat and engine wiring and made resistance measurements from each wire to its black ground wire. The 1.6 Megohm resistance is through the red wire with the female connector on the voltage regulator to ground. I think this would be the voltage sense wire.

The current resolution of my Fluke 117 is one milliampere. Yes, the calculated seven and one half microamperes, or the indicated one milliampere, is "virtually nothing." When you're dealing with semiconductors, the current flow is not necessarily related to DC resistance anyway. As miniscule as the resistance and current draw may be, it seems to me that it is not normal.

Could be that a replacement regulator would show similar resistance and current readings. Just looking for input before I spend the money on a replacement and find out.

 

[dingbat]

You could have a couple of things going on.,,

Could be phantom voltage… the 117 resolution and accuracy leaves much to be desired for electronics troubleshooting. Your 1 mA could in fact be 0.001 mA

Could have volatile and or non-volatile memory in the circuit to support.

Not sure about your resistance reading… where are you taking this measurement?

Realize your trying to read through a circuit similar to this… what are you expecting to read?