93 Battery Drain

[Joe W.]

I replaced the battery on my 93 last month with a new Delco and found that the battery was dead after sitting for 3 weeks. In the past, the car has sat for nearly 4 weeks, without a tender and no problem. I placed an ammeter in series with the negative battery cable and am reading .08 amps on the 10 amp scale. Is this a normal reading for a 93?

Thank you in advance for your answer.

Joe

[Keith B.]

Re: 93 Battery Drain

are your interior lights turning off. or anything else that would draw power? that is not normal

[Joe W.]

Re: 93 Battery Drain

Lights are turning off and I can't locate anything obvious. What is the normal amp draw for a 93?

[Ken A.]

Re: 93 Battery Drain

Thirty milliamps. (less than 1 amp). Check your speaker relay first.

[Joe W.]

Re: 93 Battery Drain

If my calculations are correct, my .08 amps is actually 80 milliamps and I'm 50 milliamps over.

[Wayne W.]

Re: 93 Battery Drain

I think 50ma +- a few is about right. That is whats wrong with batteries these days, no staying power. High cranking amp hipe, hipe, hipe, but no reserve. Most C4s that I have had contact with will kill a battery in a few weeks, and as that battery ages, it gets less and less until its just annoying. They usually last about three years +- and they are done for.

Will go a good long time if driven every day, but if it sits around much, it will get em.

[Ken A.]

Re: 93 Battery Drain

If my calculations are correct, my .08 amps is actually 80 milliamps and I'm 50 milliamps over.

More like .0770 over as 30 milliamps is .0030

[Edward J.]

Re: 93 Battery Drain

Joe, I am really not big the AC Delco batteries these days,There not the same,, made in mexico, and others places I am sure. I have a auto shop and was a big Delco lover from the 70s 80s maybe early 90s. but since they were brought out it, they tend to do alot of re-boxing. and the quality just is not the same. I use to keep AC Delco batteries at my shop in stock, I just had to many early failures. so went with interstate batteries, which is one of the best batteries on the market and carry a national wide warrenty.

I would think you .8 amps would not be a big enough drain on the car. I would tell you leaving the battery hooked up for weeks may be a problem with any late model corvette as the computers will always drain the battery down slowly. and given that most corvettes sit and not get started like a daily driver, The battery will have a tough time keeping a full charge. especially if you do a lot of short trips. Put the tender on it when you know its going to sit.

[Joe L.]

Re: 93 Battery Drain

I think 50ma +- a few is about right. That is whats wrong with batteries these days, no staying power. High cranking amp hipe, hipe, hipe, but no reserve. Most C4s that I have had contact with will kill a battery in a few weeks, and as that battery ages, it gets less and less until its just annoying. They usually last about three years +- and they are done for.

Will go a good long time if driven every day, but if it sits around much, it will get em.

Wayne-----


If they only last 3 years you're in luck if you bought an AC Delco Professional Gold series battery. They have a 42 month free replacement warranty and, then, pro-rated up to 84 months. So, if it fails in 3 years you get a new battery and, then, the warranty clock starts ticking again (it goes from the date stamped on the battery if you don't have a receipt). If it fails every 3 years you've got free batteries for life! If it lasts 3-1/2 years, you still get a free battery.

I had one in the garage I bought and never used. I kept it on a block of wood and kept it charged with a BatteryMinder. I finally needed to use it after about 2-1/2 years but it had failed. I took it back without the receipt(I'd lost it for this battery but still had one for just about every other battery I ever bought). I got a brand new battery, no questions asked.

[Wayne W.]

Re: 93 Battery Drain

That is probably so, but you also paid about 40% more for the Delco from GM, and most store line batteries have about the same deal. I just bought a Delco for my Aunts car and it was $138 where the Store brand was $94.


Fact is all of them are about the same, and the Hipe, Hipe Cold Cranking Amps are the selling point, not the ability to deep cycle. Remember the days where a good battery was rated at 60 amps. It would deliver 60 amps for 1 hour, or 1 amp for 60 hours, or 50 ma for 50 days. CCA was not as high because of the heaver and widely spaced plates, but the damn thing would cycle. The problem now is, it will deliver the instantaneous cranking amps for a very short period of time, but will go down faster because of a lack of reserve. And we are having many more instant failures especially in hot weather from shorting out of the very closely stacked plates. This hardly ever happened with the old batteries. They gave you plenty of warning. But the new ones will short out and leave you stranded even when you have just driven the car and charged the battery.

[Michael D.]

Re: 93 Battery Drain

...are your interior lights turning off...

FWIW: Do you have a visor vanity mirror? We had a slow battery drain problem with my fiancee's '96. After searching high and low trying to find it, we dicovered the mirror light was on.

[Jim T.]

Re: 93 Battery Drain

If I am not going to drive a Corvette for weeks, I disconnect the neg battery cable. My 68 and the 70 are the easiest to disconnect at the frame attachment point for the neg cable. The 85 and 96 neg battery connections are not difficult to disconnect.

[Bill H.]

Re: 93 Battery Drain

Joe, hook your meter back up and pull the fuses one at a time, this may tell you where the drain is. Note that there are also fuses under the glove compartment, you have to drop the carpeted cover.

My 92 may have a battery drain but it's never been a problem even sitting 3 weeks.
The 92 will also fire right up on 10.5 v. everytime. I never use any kind of tender on the car.
You can put a tender on but should also isolate the drain.

Buying a battery today is like buying a HDTV, they work well or they crap out in a year.
If you search reviews, you'll find complaints for EVERY brand on the market.

The majority of car batteries are created by 3 manufacturers - Delphi, Exide and Johnson Controls Industries. Delphi makes some EverStart models sold in Walmart and ACDelco. Johnson Control Industries makes Duralast seen in Autozone stores, Diehard - sold in Sears, Kirkland - the Costco brand, Motorcraft - which Ford sells, some of the EverStarts, and Interstate. Exide makes Exide batteries, Champion, Napa and even a % of the EverStart batteries.

Johnson makes both Interstate and Diehard.

I got 8 years out of an Exide on the 92 that the PO had put in. I'm now on 5 years with a DieHard Gold. 7 years on a DieHard Gold in my Silverado.
And 6-7 years on DieHard on my other stuff.
So, I'm not really recommending them, just my experience.

[Paul J.]

Re: 93 Battery Drain

...I use to keep AC Delco batteries at my shop in stock, I just had to many early failures. so went with interstate batteries, which is one of the best batteries on the market and carry a national wide warrenty.

Interstate automotive batteries are made by Johnson Controls. They offer several free replacement warranties, but so do many others.

[Paul J.]

Re: 93 Battery Drain

The majority of car batteries are created by 3 manufacturers - Delphi, Exide and Johnson Controls Industries. Delphi makes some EverStart models sold in Walmart and ACDelco. Johnson Control Industries makes Duralast seen in Autozone stores, Diehard - sold in Sears, Kirkland - the Costco brand, Motorcraft - which Ford sells, some of the EverStarts, and Interstate. Exide makes Exide batteries, Champion, Napa and even a % of the EverStart batteries.

Johnson makes both Interstate and Diehard.

You forgot East Penn.

Unless something happened to change their plans, Delphi has not made automotive batteries since 2007. Johnson Controls bought all of their off-shore battery manufacturing facilities in 2005, and their East Brunswick, New Jersey facility in 2006. The plan was for Delphi to continue to manufacture batteries in GA until it emerged from bankruptcy in 2007, and the company laid off much of it's workforce there in 2007.

Here's one of about a million articles on the subject.

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jun/30/business/fi-delphi30