Help please, remote starter drains battery??

[Kallel00]

I drive a 2005 Ford Escape Limited, and had a remote starter installed from a reliable windshield/accessories dealer (Lebeau). Brand was Orbit.



Last two years, I've had cases where my battery would be dead after a couple of days of not using my car. Thought it was me who'd forgotten to close a light or something like that...

Turns out two weeks ago I did leave my car in the parking for 3 days, and the battery was drained again. Figured something was wrong, as I was certain I did not forget to close anything.


Brought the car to Ford dealer, they said that indeed, battery ran dry after they let it in their garage for 2 days. They did the same again with the remote starter unplugged, and car started fine after 40 hours.


So now`s the time to visit the dealer who installed the remote starter (Lebeau), and the guy tells me (and shows me) that the power consumption on the idle system is at .230 amps, enough to drain the battery in two days. He then unplugs the remote starter, and shows me it still idles at .230 amps. So he says, that the problem seems to be that the power sleep mode (dunno what's the technical term for it), doesn't seem to engage, and that's not related to the remote starter.

I go back to the Ford dealer, and he says the Escape has a special procedure to verify that the sleep mode engages:

wait 40 minutes, plug the jumper thing 1st, then unplug the battery, otherwise you won't see it. He says that the remote starter dealer prolly didn't do it correctly and that's why the power stayed at .230 amps.

Called back Lebeau, and he said they did the power-sleep procedure correctly, that they know it to do it.


However, and here's the real kicker: this weekend I did leave my car in the driveway for 72 hours while the remote starter was unplugged (Lebeau told me they were going to leave it unplugged till the problem was solved), and the car started just fine this morning!!!


Any suggestions? kinda tired of being bounced back from one dealer to another like a ping-pong ball.


I'm thinking that the remote is indeed the culprit, or whatever the heck they did while trying to find out of there was a problem solved whatever the heck was wrong :P


Only "piece of evidence" I have is that my car started fine after 3 days with no remote.


Thanks for any help or suggestion you can offer.

[DoubleLP]

I think that everything is self-explanitory. Obviously the remote start is causing some sort of issue with draining the battery.

With it plugged in it kills the battery. With it not plugged in everything is fine.

I would be going back to "Lebaeu" and have them go over everything with a fine tooth comb. If they keep telling you that everything is fine, have them remove the remote start, get your money back, and go somewhere else to have a different one installed.

[nadroj23]

This is just what happens.....happened to my old car i bought a new one let that one sit outside my house for about a month or so i dont know... but somebody came to look at it and i couldnt start it....didnt know why...notice that my alarm wouldnt work either. so i figured that since my alarm was always active when my car was sitting out there is burned out my battery....that little light flashing is bad LOL....it was either that or my car being armed.....

[hellraiser456]

Take a quick look around and make sure everything is covered and there is no way for a short. IT may not be big enough to burn the fuse but will definitely slowly drain your battery

[dallas23]

Originally posted by nadroj23
This is just what happens.....happened to my old car i bought a new one let that one sit outside my house for about a month or so i dont know... but somebody came to look at it and i couldnt start it....didnt know why...notice that my alarm wouldnt work either. so i figured that since my alarm was always active when my car was sitting out there is burned out my battery....that little light flashing is bad LOL....it was either that or my car being armed.....

The alarm light requires such little power to run it would take much longer than a month to kill a good batt, if that happend to batter was no good, or the conditions the battery was in durring this time of no use had some effect...extreme cold etc.