Quote:
Originally Posted by MSS
Yes - it can - since anything above about 25mA will be indicating an amount of parasitic drain.
All you are really doing with the instrument is what you would do with a normal ammeter, which is to measure current flow from the battery to the car's electronics.
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Once you have found a parasitic drain the next important thing, but not as simple, is to find the circuit causing it, not as easy as simply finding the overall drain.
There are several ways of finding the circuit with the drain.
1) Pull each fuse in turn and measure the current, if any, across the fuse holder terminals, problem with this way it is time consuming and with many components these days that go into a progressive shut down, some up to 30 mins, it could take quite a while.
2) Measure the volt drop across each fuse whilst in situ, the fuse is a resistance in the circuit and acts like a shunt, on a circuit using no current there will be no volt drop, on a circuit using current, however small, there will be a volt drop, however small.
Using this volt drop reading and comparing it with a " Blade fuse voltage drop chart. " ( there are many to view and download on the internet ) it will give you the Amp draw across the fuse, bearing in mind it is important to read the column for the type of fuse, mini, standard, maxi.
This is a good 8 page PDF which covers all fuses that may be found on a car, go to here
https://www.powerprobetek.com/knowle...e-drop-charts/ and just click on the chart it will download a PDF to store on your computer and you can then print them all off, or just the page you need.
The link is safe.
3) This way is a doddle, I have an Amp Hound, other than switching it on and selecting the type of fuse and applying the probes, all the calcs are done and the amps comes up on the screen, not cheap for a one off test, but worth it for the time it saves if used fairly frequently.
Hope this helps.