Episode: 2298
Title: HPR2298: Phantom Power Drain
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2298/hpr2298.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 00:58:59

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This is HPR episode 2298 entitled Phantom Powered Rain.
It is hosted by Brian and is about 5 minutes long, and Karim an exquisite flag.
The summary is, I am knowing a Phantom Powered Rain on an automobile.
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Hello, this is Hacker Public Radio, and I'm your host Brian, today I'm going to rehash
a few of the conversations that I've inserted myself into on August Planet on FreeNode.
I am a mechanic by pay, so that's what my brain's been focusing on, and I would really like
to do my second clay episode, but unfortunately my mind's not clear in that manner at the
moment, so we discussed finding a Phantom battery drain on one's vehicle, which is a fairly
simple thing to diagnose that you have.
Finding where it is is not always the easiest thing, but there are a few little steps you
can take to get yourself there.
One would be you begin disconnect one of your battery cables.
It doesn't matter which one, but I always recommend doing the negative.
It's safer that way on a 12 volt system, whether you're running your solar, your windmills,
or whatever, your vehicle.
It's always a good idea to connect your positive first so that any surges happen through
the ground.
There's other safety concerns there, but I'm not really concerned with those.
I just want to protect these machines that I'm trying to repair.
You disconnect your negative battery cable, you hook up your multimeter, and you read the
amps.
It's a good idea to have a multimeter that can handle, say, 10 amps, but you're looking for
about 20 milliamps.
20 milliamps is on the higher side of normal power draw from the memory and all the chips
and the vehicle and the radio stations and the clock and whatever else you may have hooked
up.
Usually, if you think you have a phantom power drain, it's something that you did, or there's
a broken wire somewhere.
I found a lot of broken wires that you just didn't think about it or went around the
corner somewhere or wore through the shielding.
You had a short, it's not enough to throw a code for the computer, but it's enough to
drain.
I actually fixed a phantom power drain on a suburban, and when I first measured it, I
had 15 milliamps, and I said, this is fine.
When I found one of the cooling fans had their power, the positive end, completely worn
away and in contact with a bunch of metal frame pieces.
Change that, and the power drain went from 15 milliamps to 14 milliamps, but that was
enough to solve this problem, so it's really nice to have a baseline to start with.
A good gauge is 15 milliamps is normal, some cars draw a little more depending on what
they're doing.
Now if you do suspect even afterwards that you have a phantom power drain, the next step
would be if that doesn't solve it for you.
You do the same milliamp draw, but you pull fuses from your fuse box one at a time from
accessories usually.
Start with things you have an aftermarket radio, start with the radio fuses, start with
those fuses that are on the separate lines that may be there.
As you pull the fuse, if you can see your draw drop, then you know that that's a significant
draw.
Well, there's the hacker public radio episode that was kind of not really much of an
episode, hopefully someone got something out of it.
That was babbling about a transmission issue on a gas planet, so I said I'm going to shut
up, and I'm just going to record an HPR, because Kim Fallon said, yeeks, today, four days
to the free slot.
Wow, maybe we'll be listening to this next week.
All right, have a good day.
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