Ford Galaxy battery draining overnight

[Grant2012]

Is there a common fault i should know about before tacking this? Got good voltages on the alternator and battery before bed but itll only just start in the morning so somethings screwy. will take some more measurements at the weekend unless one of you can point me in the right direction.

[Chrispb]

Have a drop test done on the battery first, may save a lot of time looking for faults that are not there.
Batteries are more prone to packing in this time of year with the extra power required to crank the engine in the cold weather and all the other loads, e.g lights, screens, heaters, wipers etc.

[gregers]

make sure the glove box light or the reah hatch lights are not staying on?

[Grant2012]

Sorry its been so long I got posted to Saudi for 3 months so the gals been sat. Needless to say its now completely flat lol.

First thing I did was change the battery for a new silver one from halfrauds and she started strait up so result. problem is that it was flat again this morning but at least I can cross battery off the list. two things I notice though are that the battery reading is only 13.22 volts with the engine running and that one of the cables in the little fusebox gets hot when its idling? Should I be looking to replace the alternator now?

[pabinlove]

hi i had all this trouble which is in another thread, pulled my hair out, only enough power left just to crank it over but most of the time it was flat, but the people on here put me in the right direction, in the end i changed the glow plugs which were dead and the 109 fuse which also was not working properly, in the end a second drop test showed it was the battery, your problems may not be any of  the faults i had but just to give an idea of what i went through hope any of this helps

[gregers]

could be wrong here(as usual)but i thought when running it should show 14.4 volts?
what state is the fuse box under the bonnet in?
or im thinking maybe your alternator isnt doing its job?

[Mirez]

No that's correct, well that's the target figure. The alternator should produce around 14.4 volts but in can be anything from 13.8 to 14.8 in reality. 13.2 is low, but not low enough to suggest an alternator problem.

The very big concern is the warmth in the cabling, it should only ever get luke warm and only then when you have virtually all circuits on and are consuming excessive load.
I'd be more inclined to say you have a wiring issue especially if the engine bay fuse box is getting hot. How quick are we talking from cold to hot and hot or warm?

Warmth in cables indicates one of 4 electrical things:

1) The cable isn't sufficient for the load being drawn - VW/Ford would have calculated that correctly so its not that.
2) The voltage is excessively low, the lower the voltage the higher the current but again this is something VW/Ford would (should) have calculated in.
3) The load is drawing excessive current - ie a short circuit or faulty component
4) The cable itself has high resistance / poor contact, this partly marries up with point 2. If the cabling has high resistance you'll lower the voltage requiring more current.

Can you identify which cable(s) are getting warm?

[drober42]

Something else to check, the engine bay fuse box that the cables run into iirc there used to be a problem with them overheating and literally melting the contacts causing the battery to drain, unless you've already checked that, I think the battery positive cable may need to be replaced as well if the terminal are showing signs of overheating. Just a thought might be worth checking!.

[govman333]

its abit of a late response but new to forum in case anyone else has the problem.
My Sear Alhambra had a similar problem it turned out to be the power lead in the tailgate by the tailgate hinge, inside the rubber protector it had broke along with some other wires and they were touching , never any fuses blown just warm to touch the rubber cover...lucky it never caught fire just drained the battery fast