joelrand

Member
I have a new kawasaki mule and the battery was down to 11.5 volts after only sitting idle 10 days. I used my multimeter to check the parasitic draw of my radio. On the 10A setting it read 0.2amps. That seems high for just keeping a clock and programmed stations active. From what I see, the max allowable draw is 20ma or 0.02 amps. Maybe I'm not using my tester right. Any thoughts?
 
Yes, excessive. My mule doesn't have a radio. Is this aftermarket? Remove radio, see what happens. My mule battery stays up, no problem. The battery on my mule looks like a lawn mower battery, so a .2 amp drain will kill it.
 
I would guess the radio is wired wrong,one wire is hot all of the time, one other is wired through the switch. BTDT,or like my truck,the radio has shorted out internally and the display is lit all of the time and that is a big draw.
 
20 ma sounds reasonable,my truck pulls 50 ma. I would try and borrow another meter (preferably with a 1 or 2 amp full scale) to be certain of the drain. If draw is indeed out of spec,I would start pulling fuses with meter hooked up to see if there is drain in addition to radio.
 
In my opinion 0.2 amps (200 milliamps) is too much of a parasitic draw. See what happens if the radio is disconnected.

John T
 
Most of the auto radios have two power wires. One is connected hot at all times just for memory and draws very little current, maybe 5 milliamps or less. The other power wire is connected to the accessory bus on the ignition switch and draws quite a bit more current even when radio switch is off but accessory switch is on.
If you have connected both power wires to the battery and depend on the radio switch only you will drain your battery.
 
Yep, that sounds like a lot. Disconnect everything, then start adding things back to see what is drawing the bulk of the current.
 

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