Re: Door lock module contributing to battery drain

["John Hervey" <dherv10@xxxx>]

Knut, If anyone has a bad door lock module or one I could look at 
that has been opened, I bet I could come up with a Fix. Down here in 
Texas I drive my car year round and don't notice things like that. 
This is where a good hot battery with lots of current capacity comes 
in. I have a clip on 12 volt fan I leave running in my car during hot 
days all day long and it doesn't drain the battery down.
John
11004,6935,6568
www.specialTauto.com


--- In dmcnews@xxxxxxxxxxx, "Grimsrud, Knut S" 
<knut.s.grimsrud@xxxx> wrote:
> Because I have a daily driver DeLorean in addition to my new one 
that I'm
> restoring, my good DMC doesn't get out much during these rainy 
winter months
> (I'm in Oregon, so it gets pretty sloppy around here this time of 
year).
> I've been a little curious about the gradual battery discharge that 
our cars
> seem to be so susceptible to, so I did a little investgating last 
weekend.
> 
> It is well known that the console clock and radio consume a trickle 
of
> current. However, when pulling the radio fuse there is still a 
slight power
> drain (at least on my cars). In fact, after pulling all the fuses 
my cars
> still have a power drain from the batter of around 11mA. This isn't 
very
> much, but is sufficient to slowly degrade a battery over time.
> 
> In trying to track down this power trickle, what I found was that 
the door
> lock module on my car draws the additional 11mA of current. I 
haven't
> disassembled or reverse-engineered the module yet to understand why 
it draws
> a trickle current, but it appears to do so. I'm not sure if the 
LockZilla
> similarly draws a trickle current as I only have stock door lock 
modules in
> my cars.
> 
> If you suffer from inexplicable battery drain for a car that's 
stored for
> periods, the door lock module appears to be one of the contributors 
to the
> problem. I still need to recheck my measurements this weekend, but 
it
> appears that removing the clock/radio fuse and unplugging the door 
lock
> module may be sufficient to avoid battery drain without the need for
> installation of battery cutoff switches, trickle chargers, etc.
> 
> Knut