hello everyone
i have a 2011 Chevy hhr and my battery keeps being drained. have had the alternator and battery tested and both came back good. any ideas on what could possibly be draining the battery. bought a home charger and charged the battery for 12 plus hours. car worked great for 2 to 3 days than the same problem. battery light on dashboard has only came on once. other than that when driving out of no where the abs and traction lights come on followed by airbag and power steering. soon after that the car just dies and battery is to low to start up again. any ideas or solutions would be highly appreciated have been dealing with this problem for 2 weeks now.
thank you

 

You should have the battery and charging system checked again. Get it done at a different place since it seems the 1st check missed something.

Based on your description of the problem it sounds as if the cars charging system is not working.
Fwiw. All those warning lights popping up are usually a result of low voltage. When the battery voltage gets low, the cars computers start going nuts. Thus all the warnings.

 

Do you have OnStar? Any after market accessories, phone chargers, inverters etc? Anything plugged into what you think is a cig lighter (they are auxiliary 12V power outlets)?

 

Sounds like the alternator is starting to fail when under a load. Also check to make sure your serpentine belt and belt tensioner are okay.

 

Or a parasitic drain which can suck the life out of the battery with the charging system working just fine. I experienced the same thing, and after a lot of diagnostics traced it back to the sound system which was drawing almost 2 amps with the vehicle and stereo turned off. Further tests showed about a half amp being drawn by the interior lighting system. Was not fun to trace all that down.

To check for that, disconnect the Negative battery post and put an ammeter between the neg battery post, and the neg cable to measure the draw. To get an accurate reading, the doors have to be closed and key out and make sure the cargo light is not on. The reading will stabilize after a minute or two as there is a momentary higher draw when the meter is first connected.

From there, it is a matter of pulling fuses till the measurement drops. The normal draw should be less than 100ma if I remember right.

 

Just how old is the battery ?

 

OK. Maybe I read the 1st post wrong. But, the OP states that the battery went dead while he was driving. Based on that info, I'm not seeing a reason to look for a "drain" or any kind of parasitic drain.
I'm still leaning towards a bad battery or charging system problem. Until he comes back with some results from another charging system test, we'll just have to wait.

 

Naw, you read it right FMG - me read it wrong - me bad.

I agree, it has to be something wrong in the charging system not keeping the battery fully charged, like the alternator, or even a loose connection somewhere. I know when our alternator went bad there was maybe a 5 minute warning before it totally died - mind you smoke coming out of the alternator was kind of a dead giveaway. Who let the magic smoke out?

Even with a parasitic drain, with a good alternator and battery, as long as it starts, the battery will likely rebuild it's charge during the drive.

Me bad - gotta find my reading glasses. tap... tap... tap...

 

A loose connection, maybe even at the battery terminals, or the junction on the underhood fuse block.

 

Hey everyone
so had the electrical system test at a different place came back showing that the alternator wasn't producing any amps. So figured its a bad alternator. I installed a new one and the car worked great for the next 3 days. Untill last night on the way home once again abs, service traction, ect. lights came on again. Parked at home turned off and surprisingly it turn back on this time however the battery light on dash came on and stayed on.
the battery is at the end of its lifetime but everytime i have had it charged and tested it comes back good. Was going to buy a new one but before i invest in that anyone have any ideas what it could be.
read that it could be the belt if something is wrong with it checked it out its tight and on correctly anything else i shoud look for on the belt
did install a new starter about 2-3 months ago before i started having this problem would that have to do anything to do with it.
going to install new battery connections this weekend to see if that may be it.
i think it connections on the alternator/battery or the actual wire from alt to battert but have no ideas on how to test for a bad wire
thankyou and appreciate all you guys help