Summary

Parasitic current draws can result in flat batteries at the worst of times and won't always present themselves in an ‘easy to diagnose’ way. In this webinar we will go through a simple process to test and track down that pesky parasite.

00:00 Hey everyone, Caleb here at High Performance Academy.
00:02 Welcome to another webinar.
00:04 Today we're going to have a chat about parasitic current draws, what they actually are, why they're a problem and what we can do to track them down and hopefully fix them.
00:12 So, what is a parasitic current draw? At the end of the day it's a current draw that we don't want to see and generally when the car is off, where we don't have our alternator charging our battery, those parasitic current draws can drain our battery and leave us with a flat battery, which no one really enjoys ever.
00:32 So, before I get really into it, this is a recorded webinar so you can jump on later and watch the rest of it online or at a later date come back and go over some things.
00:46 Our worst example for a parasitic current draw, as I said, is getting a flat battery.
00:52 Over time they're only small current draws, they're not so drastic that you're going to see, well they can be, but most of the time they're a small current draw and you won't really notice until you go back to your car after a few days, a few hours if it's a really drastic draw, and the battery will be flat and you have to jump start it.
01:09 To get into what it actually is, and as you can see I've got a bit of a setup here, I've kind of mimicked something that even if you're not really deep into electrical, you may have done your own audio system, you may have run into a similar problem.
01:25 So,meone who has done audio systems before may know what I've done already to put in a parasitic current draw.
01:32 Don't spoil it for everyone else, let me explain it first please, thank you.
01:36 And to get into it we'll talk a bit more about I guess electrical, Ohm's law.
01:42 If you haven't heard it before, jump on our courses, our basic wiring courses, going to Ohm's law in depth.
01:50 It's the basic principles of electricity, resistance, current, voltage and how it all works together.
01:57 It's going to come into play a little bit here, so you might need to go watch that and then come back and watch the webinar later, or just try and stick with me, I'll try and keep it as simple as possible.
02:08 So, what else have I got here? So, the basic way that most people will look for a current draw is to put your multimeter into an amp setting, disconnect the battery, put your leads between the negative side of the battery, ideally negative side could be positive, and the lead that you've taken off.
02:29 This will give you a current draw on your multimeter, it'll tell you exactly what's being drawn.
02:34 Ideally when the car's off you don't want to see anything, but in a real world you will see some current draw in milliamps.
02:42 Most cars these days, especially newer cars with lots of electronics, will have a bit more of a current draw.
02:48 Usually, most of the time it's specified what that current draw should be, what's acceptable.
02:54 Most of the time we sort of say around 50 milliamps, that's an acceptable kind of range.
02:59 That's because a lot of components in your car will actually be drawing current even when the car's off.
03:04 Things like a stereo, they need a small amount of power to remember your favorite radio stations, your security system needs to be aware of when you're going to unlock and lock your car, so there will be some current draw but it won't be enough that it's actually going to drain your battery.
03:19 So, I guess as well as that, what determines a bad current draw is above that sort of 50 milliamp and it's something that's going to drain your battery.
03:29 If you look at your battery, I can't really show you on this battery I don't think, it actually does say, oh you can't see it on the screen, but it says here 40 amp hour.
03:38 So, what that means is if you're drawing one amp from a battery it's going to last 40 hours.
03:44 So, if you think about it at 50 milliamps that's going to last quite some time.
03:49 But when you start getting into things that are drawing almost half an amp, an amp, that is going to quickly run out and you could have a situation where you go to the airport, leave your car at the airport parking, come back in a couple of days and you've got a flat battery.
04:02 Which is going to be a really sucky time, especially if it's late and your plane was delayed.
04:07 So, I'll show you a different way that we can actually test, because like I said your radio is holding presets and if you've ever disconnected your battery before you've lost your presets, it can be a little bit annoying.
04:18 I'll show you a way that is a bit different, allows you to check for a parasitic current without actually disconnecting anything.
04:26 You can have everything set up as your car is.
04:28 It's a little bit easier, goes a bit more in depth, it's a bit more I guess on the professional side of how it's done and we'll get into it.
04:40 So, if we come down to our overview here, I'll give you a quick look at what we've got.
04:45 First of all, no this is not a milspec loom, this is a 9pm I need to get an example for a webinar as soon as I can spec, so please be nice.
04:55 It all works as it should or doesn't work at the moment, there is a parasitic current draw, spoiler alert.
05:00 So, what I've got here is a OEM fuse box, which I've just rigged up some wiring to a battery.
05:07 That is then coming out to a nice missile switch, which is my ignition switch.
05:13 It's wired into a stereo and an amplifier.
05:15 Now, there's no audio connection between the stereo and the amplifier, we're not going to be drawing any serious current through things, it's basically just to show you what you should see when a car is turned off ideally.
05:27 If I turn our ignition on at the moment, we'll see... go the wrong way with the switch... the stereo will boot up, we should see that in the screen.
05:37 Yep, kicker.
05:40 And it goes to our favourite radio station, everything's running as it normally would.
05:44 Turn the car off, everything shuts off.
05:47 As far as we're aware, everything is as it should be.
05:50 But we've come to the car later, a couple of days later, and it's dead flat and we're not sure why.
05:55 So, where do we go from there? I don't think I went into it, but when the traditional or atraditional way of checking for a current draw, having leads between the battery and the lead you've taken off, checking for a current draw, a lot of people will then go through, disconnect fuses, pull them out and sort of narrow down where their current draw is coming from.
06:18 This will actually... we're going to test the fuses directly and so we can sort of go direct to the source rather than just guessing.
06:26 I mean there is a bit of guesswork to begin with because we actually need to test each component.
06:30 At the moment we do have a current draw, as I said we've had a flat battery.
06:34 So, we're going to go to our multimeter, turn it on and I'm going to go to our 20 volt setting just to test the leads first because that would be embarrassing if it didn't work.
06:45 And we're getting 12.25 volts from our battery.
06:48 So, we know everything's good there.
06:50 We're going to go down all the way down to 200m or millivolts because we're not actually going to see a lot of voltage across these fuses, it's going to be very little.
07:00 It's what we call voltage drop.
07:03 And voltage drop is something you probably go into a lot more, it's sort of a whole other topic in itself.
07:07 Basically, everything in your circuit is going to voltage drop the total voltage from the battery that it's supplying.
07:15 So, that 12.25 voltage that we saw, everything that has a complete circuit that has a current running through it, each component is going to drop some of that voltage at some point.
07:27 Our bigger components that are drawing a higher current, well the drawing majority of the current will have the larger voltage drop.
07:33 Our fuse, which has a very low resistance, is going to have a very small voltage drop.
07:40 So, ideally when the car is off, no current will be passing through any of our components.
07:44 All of these fuses should have zero voltage drop across them.
07:47 And to check voltage drop, you're literally just going across the two sides of the component.
07:52 So, essentially the negative and the positive side.
07:55 So, these fuses on the left hand side is from the power, 12 volt from the battery.
08:00 The other side is going to our component and that's essentially going through the component to earth.
08:05 So, that would be our ground side.
08:06 If we put our leads across, as I said, ideally we've got zero millivolts.
08:13 And I'll keep going through these testing.
08:16 Still zero, still zero, and there we have two millivolts.
08:23 So, this is an indication of our problem.
08:26 I will say quickly, don't touch your leads when you're using a multimeter.
08:30 As you can see, that's already fluctuating everywhere.
08:32 It will pick up those very small volts.
08:36 We're working in very small voltages here, not even in close to a whole voltage.
08:42 Now, we've found our fuse and where our problem is.
08:45 What does that actually mean though? Having two volts where we have 0.2, 2.0 millivolts, which is what is that? 0.002 volts.
08:56 This is where we're going to go over to a sheet that I've printed off.
09:00 This is from powerprobe.com.
09:03 Powerprobe do a lot of testing equipment, some really good equipment.
09:07 I use their Powerprobe meters and they give you this printout, which basically tells you what millivolt you're getting on a fuse, which particular fuse, and what that millivolt converts to as a current draw.
09:22 And it'll tell you what current is being drawn on that circuit, the circuit that that fuse is on.
09:27 Because if you go into Ohm's law, everything coincides with each other and depending on a level of volts and resistance, you'll get a certain amount of amperage and so forth.
09:39 So, if we look at this chart, we've got at the top here our different fuses.
09:43 I will say just quickly, this is for standard fuses, the standard blade fuses.
09:49 They have a different printout for mini fuses, maxi fuses, because they will all have a sort of different resistance and so forth.
09:55 We're looking here, we had a yellow 20 amp fuse, which we can see is over here on our list.
10:01 And if we look on the left here, it's going to be really hard for you guys to see the numbers, but take my word for what they're saying, I'll read it out.
10:07 We've got the measurement of millivolts.
10:10 So, we had, I'll just double check it.
10:12 We had two, two point something, or is it just two flat? 2.1 millivolts.
10:17 If we come across the side here, we'll get to 2 .1 millivolts.
10:22 And if we come across to our yellow fuse, it says 621.
10:27 What does that mean? It's in milliamps, so we've got 621 milliamps.
10:32 Now, you might think, hey, that's not much.
10:34 It's not even an amp.
10:35 Well, if we bring up a calculator quickly, so our battery that I've got here is a 40 amp hour battery.
10:42 If we divide that by our 0.6, what is it, 0.621, it's essentially 64 hours that it will last.
10:50 Still sounds like maybe a bit, but divide that by 24, it's 2.6 days.
10:54 So, you go away on a nice holiday, come back, your battery's flat.
10:57 And that's all just because of a problem here in our stereo system.
11:02 So, now we know that there is currently 621 milliamps being drawn on that circuit.
11:08 Where do we go from there? You might just assume, hey, there's a yellow wire there, yellow wire there, the amplifier's the problem.
11:15 Don't spoil it for someone else if you know what the problem is.
11:18 At the end of the day, we've also got a yellow wire here to my ignition switch.
11:21 That could also be the problem.
11:22 It's not going to be as easy as this when you get to your car.
11:26 The looms are obviously a lot more extensive, components go everywhere.
11:31 This is where things like a workshop manual, wiring diagrams, even just the fuse box layout in your owner's manual come in really handy.
11:41 And we've got a previous webinar where I explained a bit more about workshop manuals and their wiring diagrams, how they can be really helpful.
11:47 I suggest going back and have a quick look at that if you haven't already.
11:51 But it will tell you everything that's on that circuit for that fuse, because a lot of the time you'll have multiple things on one fuse.
11:58 I think in my example, I was looking at the horn circuit and that had multiple other things on that same circuit.
12:07 So, at the end of the day, just from knowing that that fuse is the one where our amp, our parasitic current draw is on, we can't really define where that actually is going.
12:18 So, from there, this is where it does become almost a little bit of a guessing game.
12:23 It's an educated guess, because we know that that is where our current draw is from.
12:27 We're not just going willy nilly and taking care of it, like disconnecting various components.
12:33 Easiest thing to do here is look at your workshop manual or wiring diagram or even just your fuse diagram, work out what components are in that circuit.
12:42 And you can just go around to each one and disconnect them, see if that current draw goes away.
12:46 And that is basically going to tell you where the problem is.
12:50 We can, however, also look at, you can look at the, as I said, the voltage drop across the components.
12:57 It will equal the total of the battery being supplied or the total supplied voltage.
13:01 There will be that total voltage dropped across all the components.
13:04 So, you would be able to go through, test the voltage drop on all your components, and you will find one that is currently taking, well, what do we get there? 0.2, 0.002 volts.
13:15 So, you'd have 12.2 something, 4, 8 volts going across another component.
13:20 Sorry if I've lost you already, I'm saying numbers all over the place.
13:24 If we look at this, we'll go back to here, 12 .21, 12.2, 12.21.
13:30 If I disconnect something here, let's go for our stereo.
13:34 You might not want to do this straight away because you might lose your presets.
13:38 We can go back here and we've still got that 2 .12 millivolts.
13:44 So, we know that the radio isn't the problem.
13:48 As we've only got a amplifier on this circuit, we can pretty safely assume that that's going to be a problem.
13:55 But just to verify, we can unplug, disconnect the circuit.
13:59 We've now stopped any current flow and we've got zero millivolts there.
14:04 So, we can determine, amplifier, there's an issue on that circuit.
14:10 Most of the time, a lot of the parasitic current draws that you get, there'll be things like a boot switch or a glovebox switch leaving a light on, that's drawing a significant current from the light.
14:21 Or you might have a component, an ECU alarm module, that's drawing more than it should be, faulty component, in that case it's just a matter of replacing.
14:29 In this setup, I've actually just wired it incorrectly on purpose and that is why it's not working.
14:35 All these components actually work as they should.
14:38 So, to determine what's actually going on there, the way I've set it up, if we plug that back in, we'll have a look at where we're actually getting voltage.
14:47 I'll set my multimeter back to 20 so we get full 12 volts.
14:51 If we have a look at our amplifier, you won't be able to see it but we've got a ground, remote and 12 volt.
14:57 So, our 12 volt should have 12 volt constantly, there's no switches in between, there's nothing to interrupt it.
15:05 The ground is a constant ground, so across there we will have our 12 volt as expected.
15:10 And we've got that 12.23 pretty well spot on.
15:15 So, I will say here, this is where things like voltage drop, there is voltage drop across wires and absolutely every component that has some sort of resistance.
15:23 So, that's why we won't actually see across here the full voltage that is at the battery.
15:28 And that is because there is a small voltage drop across wiring and everything.
15:33 So, there you got a couple of millivolts.
15:37 What was that? 20 millivolts? Yeah, okay.
15:40 I can't remember what I said there but yeah, as I said, there's some sort of voltage drop.
15:44 So, we'll have a look at our remote.
15:46 What is the remote wire? That should be connected to our head unit.
15:50 It basically turns the amplifier on and puts it into a mode that then lets it play music.
15:58 Because otherwise if we had the amplifier on constantly, we would have an even more serious current draw and things would be having the issue that we have now.
16:05 So, if we have a look here, as some of you probably expect, we've got 12 volt on our remote wire.
16:11 Everything's off, that shouldn't be the case.
16:13 So, we can see there, you might think okay that's the issue, it's coming from the head unit or something.
16:18 What do we do from there? If we actually go back to, as I said, a different way of checking is by purely going for an amp rating and disconnecting fuses.
16:30 If we are actually to remove that fuse that we know is the issue and check our voltage across here, we'll still see that there's 12.29 volts.
16:43 So, I haven't actually removed the problem, the remote is still on, that amplifier is still going to be getting power.
16:49 If we have a look at the 12 volt side, there's 6 volt which would be probably a current coming back through the remote wire.
16:59 So, that's not actually...
17:02 yeah that's not a current supply, voltage supply sorry, that fuse that I took out is the supply for that amplifier and if I go to our continuity test I will confirm that.
17:14 12 volt down to that fuse, there we go, and there's no connection to 12 volt.
17:21 So, it isn't actually that fuse that is our problem or that circuit, there is something on that circuit.
17:27 So, with that fuse removed let's go back to millivolts and check our fuses again.
17:34 If I check this 10, we've got a very small 0.1 millivolt which shouldn't have anything on any of these other ones, these ones aren't even connected.
17:44 So, what is going on with that? If we remove it, if I can, yes, let's go back and check our voltage at our amp.
17:54 And we've lost our remote which is the problem that we are actually chasing.
17:59 So, even though originally we saw that voltage through millivolts through that 20 amp fuse at the top, it's on that same circuit, it's a part of same module, but it's not actually that circuit that is the problem.
18:13 So, we're going to trace that back and we're just going to go to the plug here.
18:17 Basically, our yellow wire is our 12 volt from that yellow fuse, black is ground and blue, if you look at the blue wire on our radio, is supposed to be our amp turn on.
18:30 But someone who's wired this has also used blue wires for a lot of other things and in the process has probably stuffed something up here.
18:37 If we take this off and if we check directly at this plug, if we can get in there.
18:46 So, where that remote wire was wired up to is down here and we're getting 12 volt.
18:52 We get zero volt up here, 0.02.
18:56 Now, there's no connection here, there's no current flowing.
18:59 If we turn on our stereo, if I can do that with one hand, good old missile switches, come on, there we go, there's our 12 volt from our radio.
19:11 So, what's happened here is it's just been miswired, these two pins have been swapped over and that's now kept our amplifier on when the car is off which has given us a small current draw.
19:23 Even though it's small, 0.6 amps, it's still enough to flatten your battery in a couple of days.
19:28 This is, I guess it comes into the issue of what is an acceptable current draw.
19:34 A lot of things, as I said, will draw some current even when they're off, they need to.
19:38 It comes down to the size of the battery and how long you're going to be, what the use is of the car, how long you're going to be leaving it.
19:46 Some cars, as I said, the newer cars have a lot more components, they will generally have a battery that has more amp hours to take up this extra power and not leave you with a flat battery.
19:57 I'm just going to turn that off.
19:59 So, just quickly while we're here, just for the sake of it, we will rectify the problem.
20:04 And I should have the right tools here.
20:10 Just de-pin this connector.
20:17 See if I can get the right wire on the first go.
20:24 And we'll put that into the other pin which is where our actual remote signal is.
20:31 Get our wedge back in and we'll plug it in.
20:40 Now, we'll check our millivolts again on the fuses, just for peace of mind.
20:48 And it's gone from that yellow fuse, nothing on our red one.
20:51 And of course, as I said, nothing connected to the other ones.
20:54 Well, that's the, should be the ignition switch.
20:56 But if we turn our stereo on, go to our 12 volt, we will have our 12 volt to the remote side and to the amp.
21:08 Everything will work as normal, which it did beforehand, only now it won't stay on when the car is off and drain your battery.
21:16 So, that gives you a bit of an idea how you can, that's one way that you can go through and check your voltage drop across a fuse and how that will actually help you.
21:26 We'll just go, I'll talk a bit more about our chart here.
21:31 Just, it can be a little bit confusing thinking, you know, all these numbers, how does it actually coincide together? If we look at now while it is off, while the, sorry, the head unit is on, just wondering how many millivolts we'll actually get across here.
21:50 Still got our two millivolts.
21:51 So, that is essentially the standby current of that amplifier.
21:55 And as I said, we get here, it was 2.1 is, where am I? I can't even read it myself and I'm right up close to it.
22:04 621 millivolts.
22:06 If we actually, I'll just turn it off for a second, just to show that this is coinciding with something.
22:11 If we take out this 10 amp, we'll swap it with the 20 and somehow put that in harder.
22:17 Now, none of these components, as I said, have any sound connection.
22:21 They're not going to be drawing any serious current, so we don't have to worry about the fact that I'm putting a bigger fuse in the wrong spot.
22:27 In the real world, don't do this.
22:29 Keep to the specified fuses.
22:30 If you're blowing fuses, don't put a bigger fuse in.
22:33 If you do that, I will find you and stop you from ever doing that again.
22:37 It's a no-no.
22:39 If we turn that on now, we should see a different millivolt across that red fuse.
22:46 It's still the same fuse for the amplifier.
22:48 We're now getting 5.1 millivolts.
22:51 If we go to our chart, find 5.1, which is all the way down the bottom here.
22:56 Not sure if that's even going to come up on camera.
22:59 5.1.
23:00 And now we go to our red 10 amp fuse and it's 662, which is very close to our, what was it, 600 and 621.
23:10 Yeah, only a few milliamps.
23:12 It's still going to be an issue.
23:13 It's still going to point out where the issue is.
23:16 So, it all still corresponds.
23:19 And I'll show you as well, just to sort of clarify it even further.
23:24 If we take into mind that voltage drop, 5.1 millivolts.
23:29 When I said that you will get the total voltage drop that is being supplied, we've got 12.21, roughly, voltage being supplied.
23:41 So, if I just bring up the calculator just to keep track, because I'm not going to remember it in my head under all this pressure.
23:50 We've got 12.2 volts being supplied.
23:55 We've got 5.1 millivolts voltage drop across the fuse.
24:02 So, I'm going to go minus 0.51, leaves us with 12 .149, so probably 12.15.
24:12 If I go to our amplifier, we get 12.1617.
24:19 So, very close to that.
24:21 And that's what I mean.
24:21 So, the voltage drop, we get a voltage drop of the 0.02 millivolts.
24:30 Sorry, it's 0.02 volts or 2 millivolts, 5 millivolts in this case, getting all my numbers mixed up.
24:37 The rest of the voltage is being dropped across the amplifier, because that is the next main component.
24:41 It's what's drawing the majority of the current.
24:44 And that is where we got the rest of our voltage drop.
24:46 And that's what I mean by, if that was the case.
24:49 So, say that everything's turned off at the moment, this amplifier is drawing current when it shouldn't be.
24:53 We can go here without actually disconnecting anything.
24:56 We can go, okay, this is our amplifier fuse.
24:59 We've got a current drawn there.
25:00 We can tell because we've got 5.1 millivolts.
25:03 We've corresponded that on our chart.
25:05 We can then go to our amplifier.
25:07 And if we check across our ground and positive at the amplifier itself, we'll see there's 12.16 volts.
25:14 We'll know that that's the rest of our current draw.
25:16 That is where our issue is.
25:18 That shouldn't be on and it is.
25:21 So, a lot of numbers, a lot of Ohm's law, as I said, it's something that it can be a bit tricky to get your head around.
25:28 I've watched countless videos just to see different ways of how people sort of explain it.
25:32 So, definitely check out our videos on motorsport wiring, the practical wiring.
25:38 They go into it really well on that.
25:40 Just have a look here.
25:41 If you've got any questions, chuck them in on the chat and they will be added in here for me to have a look at at the end.
25:51 So, we've got, as I said, a lot of the time, this might not be your issue.
25:57 Anything in your car can draw a current when it shouldn't.
26:00 Like I said, if someone's wired something up wrong, it's going to be on when it shouldn't be.
26:05 You'll be lucky.
26:07 I've purposely turned this amplifier this way because it has got a little light on the side of it.
26:12 You would see the light on and you'd know that that's a problem.
26:14 It shouldn't be on.
26:15 Things like interior lights, they may be on if you've got a faulty door switch.
26:21 A bit easier to rectify that.
26:23 You can actually see the lights on.
26:24 Things like glovebox lights can be a problem usually because it's the old fridge door light problem.
26:32 Is the light turning off when you close the door? How do you actually know? How do you get in there? So, that's where the common problem is because you don't actually know that the light's still on when it's closed.
26:42 The easiest way to check that is to actually open up your glovebox, test the switch, test the components and find if that is actually the problem.
26:51 Boot lights, you can chuck a friend in your boot, close the lid, see if the light turns off.
26:55 Recommended that you do let your friend out afterwards.
26:58 That's just a recommendation.
27:00 And you can tell if that is your issue.
27:02 As I said though, a lot of other components can be drawing current.
27:05 Even things like ECUs maybe have faulty capacitors that are causing certain components in the ECU to stay on when they shouldn't.
27:13 And that does have a small current draw.
27:15 In those cases, it's a job of replacing the component or fixing that component.
27:20 Not as easy as just swapping a wire over, unfortunately.
27:25 Things like aftermarket alarms, they're also another big common one.
27:28 You get a lot of people installing them who probably shouldn't be doing it wrong and things are staying on when they shouldn't be.
27:37 Again, if you've got any questions, jump into the chat, chuck them on there.
27:42 If I don't get to your question, jump on the forums or chuck us an email at support at hpacademy.com.
27:49 We'll do our best to get to you as soon as we can.
27:51 There's heaps of people on the forums that are really knowledgeable, including all of our lecturers and everyone else on there.
28:00 We've got a question already.
28:03 What have we got? Daniel, have you ever utilized a thermal imaging camera for parasitic draw? I find it very useful.
28:09 Yeah, I've definitely seen it.
28:11 I haven't particularly used it myself.
28:13 As I said, I've always sort of just gone to this method.
28:16 It's one of those things where you've got multiple different methods that can find the problem.
28:23 Thermal imaging is really good.
28:25 It's probably one of those things in a hobby hobbyist or at home DIY might not have a thermal image camera.
28:32 Basically, what it does is when you've got a current draw in a component, it's going to be giving off some heat and you can use your thermal camera to see where that heat's coming from.
28:41 It's used a lot in, like I said, an ECU that might be faulty.
28:45 It's drawing current that shouldn't be.
28:47 There might be a faulty regulator inside.
28:49 If you were to chuck that ECU under a thermal camera when everything is supposed to be powered off, you would see a heat register from that single component or regulator or whatever is actually the issue.
29:00 So, that is another way you could, if I had all this switched off, if you had a thermal imaging camera, we would see that there would be some heat coming from the amplifier or even the fuse wherever there is a current going through.
29:12 Because anywhere that there's current you're going to get some sort of heat and that's just the way energy works.
29:19 We could go into that till cows come home but that could be another webinar.
29:24 We haven't got any other questions by the looks of it.
29:27 That's good I guess.
29:28 Hopefully everyone's understood.
29:30 So, yeah, next time your battery goes flat, it might not be a faulty battery.
29:34 It might not be your alternator not charging.
29:36 It could be a parasitic current draw.
29:38 They're pesky but they can be found if you just stick to some sort of, what do you call it, what I've done here.
29:48 I can't think of the word.
29:49 Just stick to looking for the component that is the problem going through each individual object.
29:54 Don't sort of look at it as a whole and go, hey my whole car is drawing a current.
29:58 Nail it down.
29:59 Get a workshop manual if you have one with a good diagram.
30:03 The owner's manual often has a good rundown of what each fuse is connected to as far as circuits.
30:10 If you haven't really got any of the tooling, you've only got a multimeter, you can still work it out.
30:15 Find your voltage drop across the fuse or go the old way of a current between your disconnected battery.
30:24 Disconnect components, look for where that current draw is coming from and then nail down whether it is a faulty component or faulty wiring by whoever wired up this.
30:34 Again, if you're not watching this live, you're watching this later and you have some questions, as I said, jump on the forums.
30:40 It's a great place to ask questions and you can also email us and we'll get back to you whenever we can.
30:47 This is the last webinar for the year.
30:50 Don't be too sad, it's going to be not long until the end of the year.
30:54 We've got heaps planned for next year so stay tuned, keep your ears out, look for those emails that come through all the time.
31:01 They're really good emails, lots of good information.
31:03 Looking forward to seeing you, have a good time, have a good end of year and stay safe.