Overheating and a dead battery
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Guest
Overheating and a dead battery
I have a 91 Beretta, 3.1, auto, ~150,000 miles.
One afternoon I noticed the car was running hotter than normal. Upon looking into the problem I discovered the electric cooling fan was not coming on, so it would run hot and nearly overheat driving in city traffic.
The next morning my battery was dead. None of the typical causes of a dead battery in the morning could be found (headlights, dome light, radio were all off). After jumping the car and getting the battery charged up. I checked the current draw on the battery and with everything off on the car it pegs my meter, which maxes out at 250 mA.
Common sense tells me the 2 problems are probably related, as I was having no problems then all of a sudden these 2 things happen.
This all happened last weekend, I limped by this week and looked deeper into it today. Here is what I did:
- disconnected electric cooling fan
- disconnected all 4 relays mounted on the firewall
- pull all fuses inside the car
- disconnected the alternator cable
- disconnected various easy to reach connectors in the engine bay
None of this effected the current draw on the battery - still pegs my meter with all this stuff disconnected. Also, my SES light has been coming on since all this started happening, the error code is 53, which i guess is "system overvoltage".
At this point I am stumped. Do you think a bad ECU (or ECM or whatever it is called) could cause this? What exactly does system overvoltage mean?
Thanks in advance for any help or advice.
One afternoon I noticed the car was running hotter than normal. Upon looking into the problem I discovered the electric cooling fan was not coming on, so it would run hot and nearly overheat driving in city traffic.
The next morning my battery was dead. None of the typical causes of a dead battery in the morning could be found (headlights, dome light, radio were all off). After jumping the car and getting the battery charged up. I checked the current draw on the battery and with everything off on the car it pegs my meter, which maxes out at 250 mA.
Common sense tells me the 2 problems are probably related, as I was having no problems then all of a sudden these 2 things happen.
This all happened last weekend, I limped by this week and looked deeper into it today. Here is what I did:
- disconnected electric cooling fan
- disconnected all 4 relays mounted on the firewall
- pull all fuses inside the car
- disconnected the alternator cable
- disconnected various easy to reach connectors in the engine bay
None of this effected the current draw on the battery - still pegs my meter with all this stuff disconnected. Also, my SES light has been coming on since all this started happening, the error code is 53, which i guess is "system overvoltage".
At this point I am stumped. Do you think a bad ECU (or ECM or whatever it is called) could cause this? What exactly does system overvoltage mean?
Thanks in advance for any help or advice.
-
Guest
Overheating and a dead battery
Sounds to me like a bad voltage regulator (which on most is in your alternator)... or it could be a missing/bad ground which is causing too much voltage routed through the ECM. Have you had the alternator tested at someplace like Auto Zone lately?