2021 2500 W/ Cummins Grounding Points

[georgevandenburg]

Would anyone happen to have a diagram or pictures of the grounding points on a 2021- 2500


I suspect that is my next course of exploration.

If she sits for more than two days, the battery is dead.

I placed a multimeter between the negative terminal and the post after letting the truck "go to sleep," and I ger a consistent 2 amp drain. I proceeded to pull fuses with no identified culprits. Intermittently the meter will read 0.14 amps (Which I suspect is a good baseline), but it is not when touching anything particular.

In hindsight, the radio turned off intermittently, and the passenger running board occasionally failed to deploy.

Open to ideas but suspect a ground diagram would help.

I did order an Intelligent Battery Sensor (IBS....got to love the Irony) But I have doubts it will fix anything.

Appreciate the consideration.

 

[sag2]

I can't think of anything that would cause a draw if a ground was bad. There are probably more than 50 grounds on the truck.

 

[Diesel85]

Are you the only owner of the truck?

Any modifications? (excluding tunes)

 

[Ozymandias]

No warranty on that brand-new truck?

 

[Timd32]

140mA is alot, I know I will catch slack for this, but it really should not be that high after everything goes to sleep.

Let me see if there is a published key off draw test, to confirm or will adjust my opinion.

 

[Timd32]

Yeah it's 30mA - 50mA, (.030A - .050A) after about 20 minutes.

Your almost 3x that if you trust your meter.

Read over these, there are 2 published procedures. If you break the connection you have to wait again for stuff to go asleep.

Could chase your tail with this as well, just a precaution these are boiler plate looking to me and cover many models. But the spec is what I have seen before.

I also think that the DVMM might not catch all the pulsing of a module it might be catching only part of the draw due to the quality of meter your using.

I will say most meters are pretty good at DC testing, I happen to have a pretty high end Calibrator and we do a lot of meters, the DC tests are pretty cake for most devices. If a meter does not do DC current and voltage well its not a very good device.

You don't need to keep the meter ON for 20min, it will pass current turned off. just cant break the connection.

there was a TDR artice thing posted about batteries the other day. Not sure if it happened to address this draw deal, did not get a chance to read that. Just saw the headline.

 

[petersonj]

I will add that most multi-meters have a 10 amp DC circuit with fuse protection inside. It is very easy to blow this fuse. Before the test is started, you must make sure there are no active circuits such as dome / courtesy lamps, underhood lamp, key FOB, etc. If anything is activated during the test, you not only will have skewed results, but you risk blowing the 10 amp fuse in the multi-meter.

Typically, I would disconnect one battery ground and connect the multi-meter in series at that connection point of that battery. Once I have the multi-meter solidly connected, I would then disconnect the ground at the other battery. This would begin the test. Once the test has begun, DO NOT activate any electrical circuit - very easy to unwittingly walk over and open a door.

- John

 

[Ozymandias]

Clamp meter is easier to work with, that way you can also clamp a whole bundle of wires if you want to chase a hidden power consumption.

 

[sag2]

Timd32 is correct, no more than 50mA. But even at 140 it would still take a few weeks to drain both batteries. If you have a meter with a 10 amp and a mA scale, once you disconnect the cable from the battery and the load drops into the mA range, just connect a jumper wire between the battery post and cable while you change the meter leads, then pull the jumper wire. That avoids blowing the fuse. Just don't wake it up again without the jumper wire in.

 

[sag2]

Clamp meter is easier to work with, that way you can also clamp a whole bundle of wires if you want to chase a hidden power consumption.

You have to be a little careful. I was just using my clamp meter a few weeks ago chasing a draw on a Honda van. On the 40 amp scale it was great as long as the draw was an amp or more. Once below that it got a little wonky. Once I switched to a meter actually wired in, the draw was accurately measured.

 

[Diesel85]

I use a UNI-T UT210E DC clamp meter for amp draws so there is no risk of popping meter fuses. I've had good luck with this DC clamp meter and is pretty good at even lower current draws mostly because it has the 2 amp and below feature.

Because the DC magnetic field of the earth and the possibility of other magnetic fields near the measurement site, the meter needs to be zeroed when measuring DC currents.

Only thing I don't like about that UNI-T is that it lacks a min/max/avg feature.