FU: PSA: OBD II dongles draw power when the vehicle is off.

[Catzilla]

I charged my battery for around an hour yesterday and it went from dead to starting. Today it started fine.

[cbelt3]

FWIW.... if the battery is more than 4 years old it may have reached the end of its life. The slight parasitic drain from the dongly thing should not have killed it.

[Catzilla]

I believe the battery is less than 2 years old, I have the paperwork in the car. I may have it tested.

[cbelt3]

Catz- Good plan. They should also test the car's charging system. Something ain't right...

[davester]

This post is confusing and has insufficient information. Why do you have an OBDII dongle permanently attached for one thing, and even if there is a draw from it, how do you know that it is the draw causing the battery to die? There are many things in a modern car that constantly draw on battery power.

[Catzilla]

The car was running fine, with the exception of one trouble light. I was going to evaluate the iOS apps for this dongle:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AOIM2CC/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I received it a week ago, plugged it in and tried out a couple of apps. I left it plugged in to later evaluate more apps when I drove it again. The port is in a awkward place but I couldn't see any LEDs illuminated. 6 days later it was dead. Now it isn't.

[gabester]

Corroborating back up evidence - I've got one of those ODB-connected dangly things from the insurance company to track my driving habits - NO RELATION TO THIS POST - and I felt like the car's been having more trouble starting lately as the weather's cooled off. Last night it didn't have enough juice to start.

A couple quick google searches suggest that the ODB may be directly connected to the battery so it would seem that this might indeed be a possibility. Jumped the car and ran it for half an hour this morning (it usually gets 5-15 minutes drive time at a go) and now it's starting up like a champ again.

[Robert M]

CBelt,

I hear ya about the battery. I just had to replace the battery in my '09 Mazda CX-7. I bought the car new in July of '09 and the car could very well have been sitting on the lot since late '08. So, the battery was about 4.5 to 5 years old.

The temperatures here on Long Island plummeted recently and I'd noticed the car was having trouble starting, even though it's in a garaged parking space. Brought it to the shop. Confirmed. One of the cells was shot and it was time to replace it.

I might have been abel to get away with holding off for a bit more time but it wasn't worth it. It was a choice of a preemptive replacement by choice versus continuing to use it, only to get stranded somewhere because my car won't start and having to deal with that agita and still have to replace the battery. Seemed like a no-brainer to me.

Robert

[davester]

Catzilla wrote:
The car was running fine, with the exception of one trouble light. I was going to evaluate the iOS apps for this dongle:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AOIM2CC/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I received it a week ago, plugged it in and tried out a couple of apps. I left it plugged in to later evaluate more apps when I drove it again. The port is in a awkward place but I couldn't see any LEDs illuminated. 6 days later it was dead. Now it isn't.

I think it highly likely that this is a coincidence and that it's more likely that your battery is toast. If the dongle is really drawing enough power to kill the battery it would be getting hot because that power has to go somewhere. Was it hot when operating?

[Catzilla]

The battery is a little over two years old, but this car eats batteries.