2004 Chevy Suburban electrical draw

lakebum

I have a 2004 Suburban with 160,000 miles all have been good till recently. The vehicle has gotten a electrical draw occasionally draining the battery, but have noticed that occasionally when I remove the keys it continues to chime as if the keys were left in the vehicle. I have tried using a different set of keys thinking that the lock tumblers may not be diconection the current due to wear. Had vehicle checked today at dealer claim that I have a parasitic draw due to faulty gauge cluster. shouldn't all power be off to cluster if the ignition key was working properly.

imidazol97

@lakebum said:
I have a 2004 Suburban with 160,000 miles all have been good till recently. The vehicle has gotten a electrical draw occasionally draining the battery, but have noticed that occasionally when I remove the keys it continues to chime as if the keys were left in the vehicle. I have tried using a different set of keys thinking that the lock tumblers may not be diconection the current due to wear. Had vehicle checked today at dealer claim that I have a parasitic draw due to faulty gauge cluster. shouldn't all power be off to cluster if the ignition key was working properly.

I don't have any service manuals that might apply to how the Suburban works with the key sensor to determine when the key has been withdrawn.

I think you need another garage who specializes in electrical solving to determine your path for the parasitic draw. The typical methods can be found in some youtube videos. One really interesting is checking for voltage drop over the two contacts of the large and the small fuses. If there's a current through the fuses, there is a small voltage drop that can measured with a good voltmeter. Others involve measuring an amperage and then removing each main fuse to determine where the group of components is that are causing the draw. Then checking each of the small fuses to determine where in the group that draw is. For all of these the fuse for the courtesy lights has to be removed because that interfers with the voltages if you open or close the door. And most of those remain on for a minute after closing the door.

The clue that the key removal doesn't always get sensed I thought was a help. I think that is determined by the body control module. But your body control module is a couple hundred and needs to be installed with a Tech II computer to set up in your car. So that's not a do it yourself switch with one from a junkyard, e.g., where it might be expensive.

So it's back to two choices: believe the GM store's finding that it's the instrument gauge cluster not operating correctly, which may mean it's not going to sleep OR taking it to a good electrical diagnosis shop that tries to specialize in that awful world of mazes of diagnosing.

Because instrument cluster removal is typically easy for some cars, an alternative might be just to exchange your cluster or have it serviced by one of the many places advertising on Ebay and the internet where you remove it, FedEx it and they take a day and return it by FedEx. That could be wasted money however if the first shop's diagnosis is not right.

Major problem is it doesn't sound like it happens consistently. That makes diagnosis difficult.