Measure the voltage at the battery. Torque reads about 12.9 to 13.5 volts on my car, but at the battery I get about 14 volts at idle.

 

Okay I just drove around 45 minutes so the battery should be charged by now. When I shut it off the torque app read 12.7 volts at the battery and then I sat in my car for around 10 minutes and I saw it drop to 12.4 and I left for a few hours, I'll keep you updated.

 

The fact the voltage dropped when under load does point to an alternator it should remain and near the same voltage regardless of load. But you will need to verify with a multimeter like mentioned, possible a poor battery could put the charging system underload or poor connections/cables.

 

Battery was purchased in March of this year.

 

Have you noticed any corrosion on the cables?

Batteries are almost never the same after getting run down like that. You might see what kind of warranty you have on that. Costco, for instance, would probably swap out a battery that new for no cost.

 

No corrosion, Walmart will replace it for free I hope but I'm wanting to fix the problem first before I run the new one down as well.

 

So I came back to my car six hours later and the torque app read 12.1 volts and the key fob seemed to not work to unlock the doors but I unlocked it manually and it cranked for a few seconds but started up and got me the hour drive home. When I first started it the app read 13.9 volts and then came down to 13.7 after a couple minutes and so driving home I had the headlights on but kept everythkng that would dram battery off such as AC, Radio, and Fog Lights and the app read a consistent 13.6 volts. I'm getting a little confused by this, I guess tomorrow I will have to dig the multimeter out of the garage and do a parasitic draw test myself on the battery and test the volts to the battery from the alternator. I also want to change out the key fob battery to see if that helps.

 

How hot is it in Florida right now?

I assume that the voltage regulator compensates for heat, and will drop the voltage somewhat when it gets hot.

You might want to pull the battery out and take it to someplace with a good battery tester.

Obviously your alternator is working at this point. Maybe not 100%, although the voltages you observed while running with accessories on wouldn't be too crazy if it's hot enough.

 

The heat has been not too bad the last two days because of a tropical storm so probably around high 80s or low 90s plus humidity. So your saying the regulator will reduce voltage in intense heat situations?

 

Lead-acid batteries need lower charging voltage as they get hot. Mostly alternators compensate by saying, "If I'm hot, the battery must be hot" and act accordingly. My old Plymouth Reliant had the alternator charging voltage controlled by the ECU (such as it was in those days), according to the temp sensor in the air intake.

I'm sure there are tables covering voltage/temperature, but as an overview:

The alternator regulator also automatically adapts the battery charge to the ambient temperature. This is necessary because the charge characteristics of the car battery are not the same at -20 °C, for example, as they are at +30 °C. The regulator takes care of the need to adapt the battery charge automatically with a charging curve which is specified in the data sheets as a temperature coefficient.

 

So I found my multimeter and tested my battery and it had gotten down to 11.7 V overnight but still cranked over just slowly. I tested my alternator and it looks good went from 14.0 to 13.7 after about five minutes of letting the car warm up. I then decided to test for a battery drain so I disconnected the negative terminal and put a multimeter set to 10A to the terminal and negative clamp. At first it read high around .80 but I guess that was because the car had just got power again but after it settled to around 0.16 and then finally between .10 to .11 which seems really high as my daily is only at 0.05 when I test it.
I went through and unplugged every fuse one by one in the interior driver fuse box and then the fuses in th engine bay and it didn't go down at all. Any ideas?
Could a bad battery draw a drain like this? It's only 4 months old but I bought it at Walmart so you never know.

 

I recently reupholstered my headliner and A pillars in suede so I decided something up there must be the issue. I pulled fuse 35 which is DICE TWICE main instr. And interior light fuse and it seemed to drop the amps down to 0.01 but I'm not sure if that's just because the other things kill the power to the car. Can anyone tell me what the other 3 things are for this fuse? Also could not plugging in the overhead speaker or whatever it is cause this drain? I really don't want to have to pull this fuse everytime I get out of my car.

 

you need to put the battery on a charger,alternators aren't designed to charge a flat battery.And no way will the battery be fully charged with a 45min run..

 

The answer to all your wiring questions is in here: http://www.saabcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=622081 . It will show you all the connector locations, etc.

You will have to spend some time getting used to, and annoyed at, the WIS structure for the wiring sections. It looks like it's the DICE (628), TWICE (632), MIU (cluster, 540), Alarm Siren (275). Those numbers will mean something once you are in the WIS. I can give you some direction if you have trouble figuring out where in there to look.

I wonder if your alarm battery is dead and the main battery is supplying power for the alarm. You might try disconnecting the siren/battery module to see what that does. You can disconnect the TWICE to test too, but there are a lot of circuits hanging off that, so there would be much more work to do following that circuit.

 

I have previously already disconnected the alarm siren and alright good to know about the battery, I know leaving it on my trickle charger will take days to fully charge and I don't have that kind of time so I think I'm going to go to Walmart and just swap out the battery today and let it sit overnight and check the voltage to be sure or not if there is a drain on it.

 

My multimeter is still reading an amp draw of .10A when my car is off with key removed and drops to .01 when fuse 35 is pulled. Would anything serious be effected if I just pulled fuse #35 everyday for now? And the only thing I can think of when I put the headliner back in recently is I did not hook up the speakers in the front and middle light plastic trim. Would that draw a current even when it's not plugged in? Doesn't seem likely but just asking.

 

That is the glass breakage sensor for the alarm system, possible the TWICE/alarm could be kept in some semi awake position if it isn't connected. Try leaving the multimeter connected and seeing if the draw drops after a while. I know the TWICE will keep some systems active for a few minutes even after removing the key.

 

Okay so the TWICE is the theft system. I'm sure that is linked directly to the OnStar which is obviously useless now, but do you think it's possible that not plugging in the speakers or microphone whatever they are on the interior trim for the OnStar is causing a draw? Maybe sending the unit into check mode looking for them over and over even when the car is off? Because when I unplugged the alarm siren I didn't notice any drain.

 

Because when I unplugged the alarm siren I didn't notice any drain.

That would tie back to my thought about a dead alarm battery and the main battery keeping the alarm alive... although in practice it's supposed to be the other way around: The main battery supplies alarm power and the backup is only used when the main power is cut. But, I don't know what would happen if the alarm battery was dead.

 

Car battery will NOT recharge siren batteries. Siren batteries are non-rechargeable.

BTW; have you waited long enough, because TWICE goes sleeping mode about 20-30 mins after pulling keys off ignition lock.

 

A lead acid battery seeing 13.8 volts at the terminals means the alternator is doing it's part. That's actually at kind of the high end of what you would see. If you are anything over like 12.6 volts the alternator is supplying an excess of current for the car and the battery is charging. One could argue the alternator is weak and the battery is not charging fast enough, and that's possible, but if the battery could start the car and then is charging (even a little) then the battery should generally start the car again most times, so the problem is likely not the alternator.

I'd also respectfully disagree with the "a car can't charge a flat battery" statement. An alternator needs some battery voltage to bootstrap the whole power generation process (to create the magnetic field that the motor then forces a coil through to generate current). But even a little is enough to create enough of a field to create enough current to create more of a field to create more current... etc. So even a little current will be enough convert the ample mechanical energy of the internal combustion motor into a "net gain" current that will both give the alternator more magnetic field than it needs and to also start charging the battery.

And the alternator itself regulates its power output depending on required draw, and likely has a 100 watt to 300 watt margin of "extra capacity" under normal running operating conditions. For a 13 volt system, even with just 100 watt capacity to spare, that's 7 amps of available current for battery charging. A car battery is something like 50 amp hours, so in 7 hours of driving it should be able to comfortably completely charge the battery (worst case). It probably has more like a 200 watt margin and so could do it in 3.5 hours, which is probably about as fast as you would ever want to completely recharge the battery anyway to avoid frying it.

So anyway, while alternators do fail (mine did after I did my U-Boat commander stunt), its usually the battery or connections between the battery and car or battery and starter. And once you see 13.8 volts on a running car at the (clean and tight) battery terminals, it's likely a battery problem.

It could be a parasitic drain problem, but a 50 amp hour battery on a .1 amp load would take 500 hours to completely discharge, so 20 days. .1 amp draw (if it is really that, a cheap meter might do fine with volts but be sketchy for amps, and amps are harder to measure) does seem pretty high, that's enough to run a dome light, but if you are talking a car not starting after sitting overnight, the problem isn't a .1 amp draw. Though it could be a .1 amp draw combined with a "mostly dead" battery.

Batteries can and do fail quickly sometimes. They don't seem to be made as well as they used to be made.

So anyway, it smells more like a battery or battery connection problem to me from what you have observed so far.

(Sorry for the long rant... I'm trying to pay back help I'm getting here on other threads)

 

I'll disagree (or at least add some caveats) to what reepicheep says:
1. Well an alternator will charge a battery if driven long enough, it will never charge it to a full capacity, alternators aren't designed to do that to prevent over charging of batteries. Also most alternators don't reach anything near the peak output till you are in the 3-4K rpm range, so a quick 45 minute drive at lower RPM will do little to help charge a battery.
2. Alternators fail in many ways, sometimes just because it shows adequate voltage under little load doesn't mean it can sustain the same voltage under load. I had a 1998 900 that would show 13.5V give or take under little load, once you turned on the lights, wipers, heater, etc voltage dropped down into the 10-11 range. Originally presented like a dying battery, would drive fine most the time when started but sometimes you would go to start it and the battery was flat, turns out after driving significant trips with heater, lights, etc on the alternator wasn't outputting enough and was causing the battery to go flat during the drive, not after it had been parked.
3. If the battery is never getting fully charged by a bad alternator then a 0.1a draw would be enough to have a significant effect from sitting over night, also once a battery drops to about 50% capacity it wont have enough CCA to start a car.
4. The diode packs can go bad in alternators allowing current to flow in both directions and allowing a battery to drain.

 

0.1 A is basically enough to run one of the dimmer bulbs in an NG900 SID (1.2W), but would be less than required for the brighter 1.6W bulbs. But a steady draw like that can easily weaken a battery, especially if it's not fully charged to begin with. And car batteries aren't deep-cycle and don't like being discharged even partway. Discharge it totally, and you're likely shopping for a new battery.

And I would not want to run the alternator to charge up a discharged battery, especially if the battery is near flat to begin with. It's much more of a load on the alternator. I always put on a battery charger for a while if I'm uncertain of a battery's charge.

In this case, it shouldn't be the diode packs causing the issue, since the drain goes away when the TWICE fuse is pulled.

 

with everything possible turned off should be seeing 14.4v+,in my 30yrs+ of working on vehicles,i've never seen a alternator with less..

 

I pulled down the two interior trim pieces that house the OnStar speakers and microphone and replugged in both of them. Drove the car for around 40 mins and then parked it at 6pm. Came back out to the car around 11am today and tested the battery with the multimeter and it was around 12.50 V which is alot better than what it was the day before after sitting. I just got home and am going to disconnect the battery and throw it on the trickle charger till tomorrow afternoon and just see where it goes from there and not worry to much after today. Something seems to not be draining the battery but I only drive it maybe three times a week so I'll test the voltage periodically.

 

alternator

2002 93 2000 turbo Alternator stays hot for 4 to 5 hrs after driving and battery will be dead in morning, Does this mean that the alternator is bad? when positive cable unhooked from alternation battery find in morning.

 

You could have bad battery (1 or more cells shorted). Can you check battery voltage when car is not running and when it is running?