Gauges not working battery drains

[Brian Atom]

I have posted several posts since I first had problems with my 2005 Lacrosse. It started with the change oil alarm that caused all the idiot lights to come on. The car would not start at first but did after a while. All the gauges stopped working and the battery drains overnight. I disconnected it every night and the battery is fine along with my alternator. I just tried plugging in another gauge cluster and it didn’t work either. I’ve been reading that the BCM or ECM can cause this. I checked all the fuses no issues. The car runs fine otherwise.

 

[iownabuick]

Would need to do a test and find what circuit is drawing amps when the car is off. I have seen it somewhat common where one of the radio modules is faulty and never fully turns off and drains the battery along with doing wonky things to the canbus system. parasitic draws can be quite a pain. trying to find the draw via removal of fuses is a hit and miss and that could cause a red hearing effect. A good shop should be able to diagnose and help identify the problem. eric from sma on youtube even had one car that the rear window light or something in the back trunk area caused the canbus system to have issues along with a parasitic draw. this was a long while back he posted a video about that. that is a great channel to look into if wanting to diagnose the problem yourself. he is informative and walks through the entire process. id try to solve it myself at first before taking it to a shop if time allows. these types of parasitic draws can be costly at shops due to the time investment of diagnosis and solution. not uncommon for a tech to potentially spend several hours chasing it down and at least around here at 165 an hour, the bill could rack up very fast.

 

[Brian Atom]

Hey Iowabuick thanks for the advice! I have been looking into parasitic draws and the problem seems to be evolving. There is a message “alarm system service “ now and it seems that there is no draw when the car is off. Also the charging system stops working after about 15 or 20 minutes. This is a new development. I actually got another car in the meantime. I spoke with a dealer and they said that they could diagnose the problem for $125 but I’m not sure that this problem could be solved with a simple test. If there is a diagnostic tool that can perform this I would be willing to spend a few bucks to get one! Any advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

 

[Brian Atom]

P.S. The charging system (or alternator) works again after the car sits a while. I haven’t let it sit overnight with the battery connected yet, I will try that next.