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The Mystery of the Draining Battery - solved

32K views 9 replies 7 participants last post by  murcod 
#1 ·
I like a good mystery. So when a dame, claiming to be my wife, came knocking on my office door, I was all grins. Her Escape battery would occasionally go dead overnight. No unusual activity, no witnesses. The dealership was stymied - the battery was fine they claimed, so in their opinion, there must have been a power adapter left plugged that robbed all those electrons.

Parasitic battery drains aren't my thing, so I was thinking of buying a battery cut-off system, when I got the call. The car was dead again. I was getting ready to jump the car, when my wife supplied the missing clue - "Let me put the car in park before you do that." Eh? I asked my next question carefully - "was the car left in drive the last time the battery went dead?" She nodded.

It all came together. My wife's accent - she grew up in Italy - and the Escape was her first automatic. So parking a car in gear... I suppose it would make sense from her viewpoint. An innocent mistake with large repercussions. Park, I told her, was not a suggestion, but rather, a requirement. The battery had not been a problem since.

Case closed.
 
#2 ·
Interesting, if I do that my Escape angrily chimes at me and my display tells me the car is not in park, resplendent with red warning lights.
 
#7 ·
I did science...

I did science and can confirm that my '14 Escape doesn't make much of a fuss if you turn car off in park with the bluetooth ignition. There is a message that car not in park, but that's it.
 
#9 ·
My Kuga which is 6 months younger than Murcods does tell you that you are not in Park when you switch off, on the small screen between the instruments. It must be an update from MY16 to MY16.5.
 
#10 ·
It's possibly more a case of me being distracted and not noticing it. I probably should have worded it a bit more along the lines of it being easy to overlook if there is a warning.

It was at night, pouring with rain and I was preoccupied with finding a safe parking space and making sure there were no valuables left inside. (I was leaving it overnight in a hospital car park.) Luckily, a level car park!

A warning did pop up on the screen when I turned the igntion on the next morning. You also tend to double check the instruments when the engine won't start. :)
 
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