mystery battery drain!!

[CBR600RR]

OK, i have no idea what would cause this power drain on my battery. it drains the battery in about a day if the car is not started. any one have any ideas on where to start looking. it never had this problem tell recently. my most recent electrical mods would be a fuel pump re-wire and a saturn alt swap. a guy at work thinks that the alt is the problem, he thinks that the alt is basicly not shutting down when the key is off trying to charge the battery. First is that possible and second would that be caused be flipping the two wire's or a crappy alt. (i did get it from pepboys,rebuilt :o )

[XakEp]

Did you wire up a switched 12v source for the alternator or did you just run the signal wire to your battery? If you didnt use a switched source its very likely the saturn alt isnt shutting off and its killing your battery. If this is a 2g, use the fpr solenoid power source for the alternator.

[CBR600RR]

Nope, this is a 1g. i didnt think you had to finds a switched source for the 1g, i thought it was just a strait in wire job. so which wire needs to be connected to a switched source on the 1g wiring, is it the yellow wire, or the other one??

[XakEp]

Uh, yeah. The alternators used for the install are the same for 1g or 2g. If you dont use a switched source you'll kill your battery. The DSMlink writeup says -

(1G)The 1G connector is a 2 wire just like the saturn alternator. The large yellow wire goes to the F terminal(black wire on the saturn connector).
The small black wire goes to the L terminal(black with white stripe wire on saturn connector).

*** WIRING *** It is recomended that you run a 12v SWITCHED ignition source(F on the alt) wire to the alternator rather than use the constant 12v supply found in our cars.


From the thread and the poster here has a 1g

I wish I knew what it was doing. On wire is "fire" and one is "light." Whatever that means.

But what I do know is that if you use the stock 1g wiring to the alternator then it is getting power all the time and mine would hum with the car off. It was drawing about .3-.5 amps when humming and would have eventually killed my battery. So the switched source only gives it power with the key on and no more power drain.

The guy who did the writeup did it on a 1g, here's what he says

The only thing difference about the wiring from the saturn and 1g or 2g, is the the 12 volt source is constant on the dsm, and the saturn only gives 12volts to the alternator when the ignition is on.

So we need to hook the saturn alternator up that way when installed on our cars, so there is not a constant draw on the battery from the voltage regulator when the ignition is off. Because if you let the car sit for days with out running, it will drain the battery.

Basically saturns only provide 12v when the car is on, and our cars will give 12v to the alternators constantly, and our alternators will internally stop the draw when the car stops. A saturn alternator will not stop the draw, and will suck power as much as it can, so in a 1g or a 2g you need to give it a switched power source and not an always on like the stock wiring in our cars does.

So if you just wired it like stock, you're giving it a constant feed when the car is off. Wire it like the writeup says and dont assume (heh heh heh).

[CBR600RR]

Ok, i see that. i just went to dsmlink and looked at that too. i guess it kinda confused me because he put that little section at the bottom and didnt emphasize it for the 1g like he did the 2g in that little wiring section. thanks for the help, i guess i gotta get back to some wiring.

[XakEp]

No problem. Its easy to make that mistake reading that OP. That 2G warning is right there, easy to think the next line is for 2Gs as well when its for all DSMs.

[Overkill]

What diagram are we talking about?

[nismo silvia]

I have this same problem on my 1g

[CBR600RR]

do you have the satern alt swap? if so your field wire ( the f wire on the saturn alt) needs to be run to a 12v ignition source and just cap off the yellow wire that would have normaly gone to the f terminal

[nismo silvia]

I don't think so but I don't know I just know that my yellow top optima is always dead in the morning

[XakEp]

Disconnect the battery ground and use a multimeter on the fuse block to trace where the drain is coming from. At least then you can trace down where the drain is and you can use Alldata to figure out what all is on the circuit.