What is the proper defenition of a short?
My battery constantly dies on me. Not while i drive, but wen the car is shut off for a long, sometimes short, period of time.
I have done a battery test and alternator test and they both ae working fine.
What do u mean bulletin recall on ignition switch?

 

Dazed: At the top of the screen are links for recalls and TSB's (technical service bulletins). A short is when a hot lead is grounded. This can cause a whole slew of problems ranging from a blown fuse to a blown ECU.

It sounds like your battery is dead. Was it tested for charging or just acid? A battery could pass the acid test but have corrosion inside preventing charging in which case it wouldn't pass the charging test. A short would usually have another problem associated with it rather than just draining the battery. For example, before I got HID's, I had a high power headlight relay kit and one blew/shorted out. When I'd turn off the car, sometimes it would keep the 1 headlight lit, but sometimes it wouldn't. Either way, after a little more than an hour my battery would be dead. Ripped out the kit and the problem disappeared. Please check any aftermarket electronics connections and that all aftermarket devices are working properly.

Let me know what you come up with.

 

The term "short-circuit" is misused so much that it's just about meaningless. If an electrical tech says 'short', then maybe I'llbelieve it.

If any random person on an internet board says 'short', I interpret it to mean any and all kinds of electrical trouble.

A normal electrical load that fails toswitch off can drain your battery. For example the trunk switch doesn't work and your trunk lamp stays on when the car's parked overnight. That's not a short circuit.

You use the switch to turn on an interior readinglamp & forget to turn it off. That's not even a failure, really, but it results in a dead battery.

A common problem with the ignition switch is really an intermittent open circuit.

A ground fault is another thing that causes flaky behavoir. Lots of people call that a short...

 

Good points Jim. A test for the trunk switch problem (or similar problem) would be to put an ammeter on the battery when the car is off. There should be less than 1 Amp drawn off for the clock. If there is a larger current then there may be a bad switch somewhere as Jim noted.

 

if you go to our DIY section there is a write up ( battery going dead) ,,
https://www.hondaaccordforum.com/Bat...m_17476/tm.htm

it could be an electrical drain ,, Like Jim said,, there is something staying on, draining your battery , when it should be turned off ..

there is a recall from honda on ignition switch ..

 

Or maybe open the pass-thru in the back seat and look to see whether the lamp is on or off.
Then there's the glovebox lamp...

One amp is 12 watts. That's kinda like the trunk lamp.
I think several milli-amps is more like it. A 50 amp-hour battery would go dead in a couple days with a 1-amp load. I've parked cars for a couple weeks & they started right up. That's 300 or 400 hours, so that's gotta be way less than 125 milli-amps.

 

You're right ..... I'm just assuming that if it's a switch like the trunk, the light associated is greater than 12 Watts ----> 1 Amp. The trunk pass-through is a good idea for that switch, but what are the chances that the problem is that simple to diagnose?

What if we say half an Amp?

 

Yeah, there's probably a couple lamps that are smaller yet. 5 watts for glovebox, maybe 1 watt or less (100 mA) for illuminated switches.It's the general idea of looking for loads that don't turn off.

Sometimes electrical problems can really be nasty to figure out. I had a strange one that turned out to be a wire frayed & came apart inside it's own insulation. It looked good but didn't conduct electricity. Took me about 10 hours to figure that out. Then it took me all of 1 minute to fix it. How does a 'real' mechanic write a bill for a job like that?

We're kinda losing track of the original question.

Edy... Let us know if you want help fixing it yourself or if you just want to generally confirm that your mechanic is mostly honest. Either way, we'll have to figure out more information before our advice can be very useful.

 

This is her last post. I don't think that she's following this thread anymore ..... apparently someone pulled a price out of their @$$ for her.

---- How much to fix a short? [size=3] Are you kidding me!!!

 

My problem still is a problem. Im goin to find or buy a meter and se if there is a drain after the car is turned off.

I did a charge test, they guy at AZ said he put it on the charger, for about 2 hours, and he said the batt was fine.