We was called out to diagnose a Reliant Robin ( yes the only fools and horses special ) with a battery drain issue due to the vehicle being very basic there was only a small amount of things it could be. However when carrying out our 1 hour diagnosis we found 2 issues. The first being the voltage at the battery was changing voltage when the engine was running. The vehicle would charge at 14 volt with the engine running and by moving the alternator lead you would see the battery voltage change from a healthy 14 volt down to 12 volt while the engine was running.
We traced this back to the main wire coming from the alternator having a loose pin. Once tightend the issue completely disappeared. And the vehicle remained charging at a good 14v with the engine running. We also found a 500ma drain which was slightly harder to diagnose due to the way the dashboards are designed on these vehicles.
We tested many parts but we couldn”t find anything causing a drain. The last thing to check was the non-working clock however the customer had blocked the radio cut out with a glued in panel. He had to remove this in order for us to carry out further checks, once the clock was unplugged the drain completely disappeared.
This customer got a confirmed diagnosis without any guess work! call 07340 341790 for any diagnostics you require.