>>891543Crosspost - please help /diy/ friends!
Bought a winter beater 2003 Ford Focus and went to drive it the other day after letting it sit for 1-2 months. Battery was completely dead. Yesterday, my brother jumped it with my car and it ran fine off the Alternator power.
We drove it for maybe 10 minutes and that was enough to have some interior lights work but not come close to starting, I assumed it wasn't nearly enough time for the Alternator to bring back a completely flat battery.
I bought a Schumacher 8A Battery Charger and let it charge for 6 hours or so, took it off overnight and checked it just now and it read something like low 11s, which means it took some charge but is still way low.
I decided to check, then, for parasitic draw but I am not sure if my procedure is correct. I made sure everything was shut off, doors closed, ignition on off with key out. Took off the Negative battery cable and set my Multimeter to 10DCA and it read 00.62 - which equates to 620 milliamps. Obviously way too high but I've read that some Fords will read around 5-600 mA shortly after being shut off.
Thing is, I'm testing with the cable removed and the Multimeter is connecting the circuit between the battery Negative and chassis Ground, which would seem like it would draw high current on the initial connection - I'm essentially (I think) reconnecting the Negative cable.
Even if there's a parasitic draw of 600mA I can live with that as it'll be daily driven in the winter, I'm just trying to completely rule out buying a battery replacement since it was a $850 car. It did take a (partial) charge and is not that old. I'll try connecting the Schumacher again and letting it run for longer than remove it and check if I have Voltage improvement in the 12v range.
