i have been through 3 batteries and 2 starters, when i boost the battery it is good for the day but over night the battery dies and i need a boost again, been to a couple of mechanic's and no one can find the problem. alternator is good and charges well but something is draining the battery all lights are turned off and nothing plugged into the lighter plug....if you have any ideas it would be much appreciated!!!thanks in advance...

take it to a dealer. or remove negative battery cable get a multi-meter with a 10 amp scale place the meter is series with one lead on the negative battery cable and the other on the negative part of the battery. make sure all doors and lights are off.you should have around .10 mA you might have to wait acouple of minutes for everything to power down. if you have more mA or even amps start remove fuses. try the rear window defrost as the relay might be staying on.

I had the same problem. Mine was the power sliding door. If yours has psd let me know and i'll try to tell you what i did.

Mine had corroded wires on my load levelling air ride suspension... which I have changed since with gas shocks and overloader coils both front and rear... It made a noticeable difference in the front :)

I had the same problem. Mine was the power sliding door. If yours has psd let me know and i'll try to tell you what i did.


Hi, new here but my 95 transport is having the same sort of power drain and was wondering what was wrong with the psd on yours.

My 1990 is doing the same thing, but it's random, sometimes it dies, sometimes it does not.....go for a week and then just randomly die over night and when I say die, it completely dies, no juice whatsoever in it..trying to figure it out..

,,,funny thing, I have kept my Transport in storage in the garage (yes, I was able to get enough of that junk out so I could enter the car) for the winter, and after 2 weeks..may be less, I did not check often .. the battery runs dead...but the battery is 6 year old, and I consider this a "battery" problem. It was already a "poor" battery last summer and would not withstand the lights on for even a small few hours.
SO I recharge the battery to get the car out and in when I want to have more room in garage to work on other car or other project...and the next time I want it alive, it is dead again....I might try to see if in fact, I have a drain....but afer 6 years, it is cooked anyway.......
So again, how old is your battery?.......

It's ALMOST one year old only.....I can't imagine it being the battery because it charges up fine, and it only sometimes dies..It's not like after we charge it up it always dies again, just sometimes, it's completely random...

OK good to know...not the battery. I just hope the problem will be there when you have the opportunity to do the "amp" test, and indeed, the "amprobe" your friend had is normally an alternative current tool only that you just clamp around the conductor and by induction, it will tell the current, but this not work in DC (except advanced fluxgate models that are rare).

Well guess what, we found the culprit (almost). Get a load of this: I went in the garage to get something tonight and I heard this noise, sounded like the power hum you hear sometimes from a flourescent light so I figured that's what it was since we have a shoplight so I turned it off and the noise was still there.

So then I thought it was coming from the lightpost outside, went outside and didn't hear the noise anywhere. Wasn't the water heater and there was nothing else in the garage except for the good ol' Transport..

Sure enough, started the van, put it outside, no more noise in the garage.. brought it back in and the noise disappeared!

I turned the ignition to the on position (the position b4 it starts where you can operate the AC, and everything else) As soon as you move the key to that position you can hear the hum - it's SOMETHING engaging for about 4 seconds and then it stops and you hear a click come from the engine, so apparently whatever this thing is, it stays on sometimes and that is the hum and 99% sure that is what is draining the battery. It sounds like a power hum, or possibly a small motor turning something - similar to the sound of my old RX-7 with the pop up headlights like a corvette..

My dad thinks it's coming from the back of the van so it might be the built in air compressor doing something....

Any ideas what this sound is? Could it be that air compressor? We're going to have a better look in the daytime tomorrow...stay tuned =)

Absolutely. I should have asked if you had the auto-leveller. SO you have a leak in the air assisted suspension - most obviously the shock absorber rubber sleeve, it did it on mine (but at that time my compressor was already dead and I would inflate the shocks with another compressor from time to time) - and the compressor kicks in from time to time . THIS is a really weird thing..because this system is indeed HOT at all times: it would have been logic to haveit ON only when running the car"
In the immediate, you can remove the ELC fuse in the fuse block in the glove box. It is a 20 A fuse probably clearly identified...or remove the ELC relay that is hidden behind the compressor control panel inside at the rear, aft of the left wheelhouse: www.avigex.ca/xport/elcrelay.jpg a little awkward to remove--go slowly not to break the plastic when pulling the "plastic" fasteners out of their hole: pry slowly , they will go out. If you remove the relay, wyou will still be able to use the compressor for other purposes.
Whatever is left of the air sleeves will destroy because without air, the rubber sleeve will deflate completely and rub against itself when the suspension moves.
Then you have to choose:
- leave them as is if the shock absorber action itself is still satisfactory...not a bad idea: price = 0$....
or
- buy a new pair of Monroes (not Gabriels, POS) with air chamber and replace the existing ones, an easy job. www.avigex.ca/xport/shock2.jpg
or
- buy standard shock absorbers.

IN all cases, you will have the compressor left so you can keep using it for inflating tires or other devices.
BTW, contary to popular belief, "load leveller "shocks" are not "air shocks" (like "gaz shocks" ) but normal shocks absorber with an additional rubber sleeve around that is totally independant of the shock function itself and that acts as a supplementary spring to raise the suspension.
Good find: you can leave the "convenience center" alone.....
...ahhh....in fact, in same situation (obviously the leak is not that bad because you would have heard it more often) I would think of transferring this circuit to run only when ON...so you could keep the feature alive before you replace the shocks with new "...air" shocks... I"ll check the diagrams to see what is involved and come back with this later....

So could this be what is draining the battery at random then? Makes me think so since you said that system is "hot' at all times.....

I should have though about that sooner....i fact, there has been another post a few months ago, where this was exactly the problem, ?!? may be in the Bonneville forum.., maybe here
CHeck previous post : I have made some changes to make things easier..... remove fuse for testing first

EDIT: ......About the headliner ??!!.....my Waterloo.......!

This is great - thanks to you all this stuff is easily fixable, the blower motor, the air compressor staying on... once i get those two things fixed, the van will be in good shape except for one thing, which is the headliner on the roof of the cabin - it started to come unglued a while back and everything was downhill from there so we just ripped it out completely - they want $300 to put in a new headliner and we just don't want to spend that on it - any ideas for a cheap workable fix?

"In the immediate, you can remove the ELC fuse in the fuse block in the glove box. It is a 20 A fuse probably clearly identified.."

I looked for this fuse, could not find anything that was clearly identified, unless i'm looking for the wrong identification?

I scanned the Fuse diagram from my manual, instead of ELC, it says ELEC - is this the same thing?

http://files.automotiveforums.com/gallery/watermark.php?file=/500/281306fusestuff-med.jpg

Mike

Indeed...same

Well I just came in from outside - those plastic fastners were HELL to get out, I only got out the rear two, so I had to pull and bend that plastic cover to get to the relays - I wasn't QUITE sure which one it was, so I just unplugged all three of them that were in there; We'll see what happens? At least now I can tell though if I hear that noise after the van is in the garage, I'll know if that was it or not..Do I need to unplug that fuse if I disconnected all those plugs?

...You would have been OK with the fuse alone...if all is disconnected in the back now, you can keep the fuse, at least the rear cigarette lighter might keep working in case you use a cooler....

well I just hope that WAS the problem...only time will tell =)

...You would have been OK with the fuse alone...if all is disconnected in the back now, you can keep the fuse, at least the rear cigarette lighter might keep working in case you use a cooler....

Believe it or not, a year later and this problem is back! If it is the auto leveling system, then that ELEC fuse has nothing to do with it because it is removed and we heard the humming noise last night before bed. It happened a few weeks ago too but this time we noticed something: Yesterday we had two of the five gallon water bottles and about a 40 lb audio speaker in the back.

Could it be possible that the auto leveler just gets STUCK in an on mode? But this should not be the case because the fuse was removed... Still perplexed...

Any ideas?

Believe it or not, a year later and this problem is back! If it is the auto leveling system, then that ELEC fuse has nothing to do with it because it is removed and we heard the humming noise last night before bed. It happened a few weeks ago too but this time we noticed something: Yesterday we had two of the five gallon water bottles and about a 40 lb audio speaker in the back.

Could it be possible that the auto leveler just gets STUCK in an on mode? But this should not be the case because the fuse was removed... Still perplexed...

Any ideas?

Same problem here a couple years ago with a 91 lumina APV. It had load leveling on it and it would energize in the middle of the night and drain the battery. Finally heard it humming one evening so I disconnected the wire connectors at the air compressor. Problem went away.

so I disconnected the wire connectors at the air compressor.

Where are these wire connectors? Do I have to go under the Van? Or are they behind the control panel for the air inflator as LMP mentioned in previous posts about the relay...?

with the ELC relay disconnected as per diagram below
www.avigex.ca/xport/elcrelay.jpg
this compressor should not live by itself....
I'll check for the schematic diagram....and come back later.

Alright, I went outside and got that panel off again to see exactly what we did last year. As you can see from the picture below, we disconnected THREE different connectors.. The only things that are left connected appear to be just air hoses.

http://www.geocities.com/sdsumike619/transport.jpg

So with all three of those plugs unplugged, as well as the fuse removed - why is this electronic level control still turning on and draining the battery overnight?

www.avigex.ca/xport/elcdiagram.jpg OK the only way the compressor can run then would be a short circuit (salt/moisture) between contacts C and B at the compressor assembly (under the car) since C is hot all the time...
IF the ELC fuse is removed and my diagram ( 93) is exactly same for your car, then it should not run !!!..I guess you will have to disconnect at the compressor itself.

Can you tell me approximately where I can find the compressor under the car? Also, I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at in your diagram you just posted and how it relates to your instruction about disconnecting at the compressor itself.

The compressor is under the car behind the left rear wheel well. It is surrounded by a protective shell if I remember well....mine has been removed several years ago because of salt corrosion damage to compressor, purge valve and height sensor in the middle of car just above the rear "axle". WHat it did then was blowing the fuse all the time. SInce then I have rearranged the tubing and I use a 10$ compressor ...the original system at GM would have been well over $1000....eh--would you believe!

I think I still have the scrap compressor somewhere..so I could have a picture .of it and the connector location...but you will find anyway...
Look back to the diagram in previous post : I have added a circle around the connector (4 wires).

Well I got down and dirty and got under the van, removed the plastic shield and removed the whole compressor assembly. I only found one power plug for the whole thing so I guess that was it, unplugged that, cut the rubber air hose, and disconnected the small plastic air tubing from the compressor.. those were the only three connections. Jumped the van, drove it around so we'll see what happens. I just trashed the whole compressor, felt good to do that, I hope it was the problem!