02 Windstar Battery Dead Intermittently

02 Windstar 3.8, 90k mile. Twice now in the last 6 months, my wife has gone out to the van, loaded kids in (car seats and all) to find out that the battery is entirely dead. The battery is less than a year old and works just fine 99% of the time. Its all or nothing. This leads me to believe that something is draining the battery (duh :)). Prior to yesterday, it happened about 6 months ago during the summer and was fine ever since. I know on my 98 Windstar, all of the interior light go out after about an hour regardless of whether or not you left them on. I thought this van had the same feature, but maybe not.. Does anyone have any ideas? I charged the battery last night and it started fine this morning, but I suspect the same issue will come up again before too long. Thanks!

I would consider 3 options.
1. you have a loose or corroded connection from the battery terminal
or
2. your alternator is not charging the battery properly.
or
3. there is a parasitic drain somewhere (I've read others with a broken tail light bulb have had battery drains until they replaced the broken bulb).

you can get your alternator checked while it is still in the van but it's not as good as bench testing it which requires you to take it out of the van.

I've had both tests done in auto parts stores like o'reillys. autozone does it as well for free.

Hello

It sounds like someone/something is leaving the interior lights on. Does the 2002 have a switch to shut off the dome lights? You would think that Ford would have that problem figured out by now!

I know on my 98 if I don't close the back hatch from the center of the door one side doesn't close and the lights stay on. When I had the old battery in that would be enough to kill the battery.

I would get the battery load tested along with a draw test.

Regards

Dan

Yes check to make sure your battery is good.. Still could have a bad cell.. If that checks ok then check to make sure your lights are going out after doors are closed.. It does still have the battery guard from what I see on my 2001. I work on the van and leave the door open and after so long my lights go out.. Also do you have an aftermarket DVD player or cell phone chargers plugged in full time.. This can become an issue over time. Like short runs from home and store or were ever.. The alt does not have time to fully charge battery and can cause extra battery drain when things are left plugged in. I am seeing this with all cars as well.. Just replaced a Battery on a 04 Saturn Vue. Because of this. Also battery had one dead cell and cell phone and IPOD power plugs were left plugged in full time.. Hey I use to leave my cell phone charger plugged in all the time to I realized it pulls more power than I thought..

Well, I think the culprit is short infrequent trips on the part of my wife. She often drives a couple of blocks to the library and back. Also, the goofy thing has all the electronic gizmos like heated seats and power doors. I'll keep my eye on it and post back if the problem persists. Thanks!

I had the same problem with my 02 windstar, it did it to me about 4 times in a span of 6 months, it turned out to be the lights on the inside of the van where you opened the sliding door not all the lights just the 2 little ones (1 on each side) on the door pillar toward the floor board, they where staying on, I just took the bulbs out and I've never had a problem again thats was almost a year ago.

This might seem like a stupid question... Are you sure that the battery is discharged and not somehow disconnected instead?

I had the same problem on my 03 windstar,every few months my wife needed a battery boost and i couldnt for the life of me figure out why,, then one day my neighbor call me and said i left my lights on, when i went to check the light switch was off but my brake lights were on,and since then i noticed it more often the brake lights were on,, if i wiggle the brake peddle the lights went off,i had it checked and the "stoplight" switch on the brake peddle was sticking causing my battery to go dead, NAPA and most auto part stores sell this switch for about 20 bucks and its an easy fix. Good luck.

Yes I forgot about the brake pedal switch mine did that also.. Good call.. I never knew until my neighbor told me.. I forgot all about that brake pedal switch..

Hi again folks... Well, this problem hasn't gotten any better and my wife has found the battery dead several times in the last few months. I went on my library's website and found all of the service bulletins related to my van. TSB 02-13-9 describes a procedure for checking current draw on the battery in various states of the computer's shutdown (for lack of a better description)... At any rate, you essentially attach a meter, set for current measurement, between the negative battery terminal and the negative battery cable. Note, don't try this without reading the TSB. To make a long story short, the current draw after the van has entered "sleep mode" (after about 25 minutes), should be about 35mA (0.035amps). Mine is reading about 70mA. So, the next step was to isolate the current drain by removing fuses one at a time and watching the meter. As it turns out, the current draw is coming from my "instrument cluster" fuse. I don't have the fuse number right now, but will post later if necessray. So, now for my question: does anyone have any idea how to go about replacing/fixing the "instrument cluster"? I have no idea where to start or how much $ it will cost, or even what it looks like! ...unless it's just the dash display... Any help/advice would be appreciated... Thanks!

are any of the bulbs out?

In addition to powering the instrument cluster, the fuse might easily be powering a half dozen other unrelated circuits so it isn't necessarily the cluster which is causing the excessive current drain, so replacing it might only be needless effort and expense. It would be handy if you could give us the fuse number so we could check the wiring diagrams to see what else, if anything, it feeds.

Also, while 70mA is more drain than I would be happy with, it shouldn't be a problem if the van is in near-daily use, although it would become a problem if it's parked for extended periods. If the van is in near-daily use then you might have another problem which you're not yet aware of.

Does your meter have a peak-hold feature? If it does then that would be really handy and I'd set it to the highest current range, typically 10 amps, then switch on the peak-hold (after it has gone into sleep mode) and leave it hooked-up overnight and then see if it indicates that there has been current drain which exceeds the 70mA which you are already aware of.

I don't know the the BOO switch (brake on/off) switch is on that circuit or not but that switch is also prone to causing parasitic drains. It also causes only periodic problems so that may explain what's happening. I chased that problem, in addition to the middle brake light in the back door around. The boo switch has very close contacts and sometimes it sticks. That causes a periodic drain you don't know unless you walk away from the van and look back. The Boo switch is actually attached to the brake pedal. It can be removed and cleaned. I found when I replaced mine that the plastic had simply worn and this caused the switch to periodically remain on. Both brake lights on for an extended amount of time of course will easily drain a battery.

FWIW, my :2cents:

Piper

Thanks for the advice. I will try it again with a different meter... The fuse is F2.16. Also, i will check for bulb outage. The van is driven once every 3 days or so... Also, since my 7 year old frequently unloads the groceries from the van... and sometimes leaves the hatch open, and in turn all of the interior lights. But, of course, they would go off after 25 minutes. Just for grins i checked the current draw with all interior lights on and it was around 7 amps. Although i'm sure this could contribute to the problem, i'm confident that it's not always part of the problem. Along the same lines, has anyone ever tried the LED interior bulbs? see link below...
http://www.uxcell.com/led-red-car-lights-bulbs-for-12v-p-17632.html

Well, as I said, i'd put a different meter on it. I used a fancy fluke meter from work and had it monitor the max current draw overnight to see what was draining the battery. After waiting for the van to go into sleep mode, i set the meter to record max and average current draw for roughly 8 hours. Here are the results:
99mA max
26mA average
I wasn't sure what caused the spike, but i wasn't too concerned given that the average was low.
Soooooooooooo, after this little excercise, i came to the conclusion that excessive current draw was NOT my problem (although the van wouldn't turn over after that night). So i took the battery back to Sears (where it came from less than 1 year ago!) and they said it was NO GOOD. Brought new battery home (free btw), installed, haven't had a problem since! So, the moral of the story..........don't assume that your battery is good just because it's only a year old! Some lessons are learned the hard way, but i suppose that's better than learning nothing at all. :)

I'd expect that the 99 mA max is when the "alarm" lamp flashes on the dash. The 26mA is when it's not flashing. On my fluke meter when set to sensitive it'll actually show the 99 when it flashes. 99mA isn't going to drain a battery though. Glad to hear that the battery was the cause. Makes buying one of the otc battery testers a good investment as it seems we all chase a ton of unnecessary "potential" causes when it's something simple.

One time I had what I thought was a bad bearing in the drivers front wheel. I chased that problem for about 2 weeks. Only made a noise on a left turn. About 5 days after giving up I found one of my son's glass marbles underneath the driver's seat that was rolling and hitting the metal supports.

How much would Ford have charged me to diagnose that???:runaround: