458 Battery drain

Ferrari's have been notorious for battery drain compared to other vehicles that can sit by themselves for weeks or month or 2 or more with out being started. Ferrari quirks....but yeah I am with you in that this should not happen in today's age but it does and it is nothing the dealer can or will solve.

My wife is looking for her car. She works from home and does not drive much but she deserves something very nice. For the price range I told her to check out the Roma. Fun car, drives incredible, could daily it but she doesn't. Problem is the car could sit for a month or so or he could go visit a friend and the car sits while out of town at her friends for 3-4-5 days and that is a problem with Ferrari's. So the Roma or any Ferrari for her is OUT.

 

Do you lock and arm your car?

 

I went through this with my 2015 458 Spider, 12k miles and using a 2017 circa Ctek MUS 4.3 tender that I originally purchased for a former 360 Spider.

Last Spring i had my dealer change out the458's battery. After that, if I did not drive the car for 30 days I would experience an almost non-crank situation where the car would slightly turn over but almost not start but then would fire up and would throw an error message about taking the car to the dealership with an electrical error icon displayed. My dealer checked out the vehicle and all tested ok, including the new (Interstate) battery. I decided to go back to the 458's original equipment tender and I got the same poor start results. This went on all last year. If I started the car during the month it started fine. By October I after again having the car checked at the dealership with no issue found, I was lent a new Ferrari tender which I found out was produced by CTEK for Ferrari. After a 6 week rest the car started as expected. So it seemed it was the two tenders that I had that were the problem. Over the winter I purchased a new CTEK 5.0 and car started as expected in early March when I took it in for its annual maintenance. I againn did not drive it until last Friday and it started fine. Possibly look at replacing your tender.

 

Use this tender for your car.
https://www.amazon.com/CTEK-56-353-12-Volt-Battery-Charger/dp/B000FRLO9Y/ref=asc_df_B000FRLO9Y/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=721245378154&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=15550545777488715740&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9031318&hvtargid=pla-2281435180058&hvocijid=15550545777488715740-B000FRLO9Y-&hvexpln=73&th=1

I left my car for 6 weeks on this tender version and I had no issues the last 8 years. The oem ferrari tender I use would have the same symptoms as yours.

 

Mobilizer is a parasitic drain and I've noticed I have to replace my charger every 2-3 years.

 

Me?... in my garage I do not.

 

1 day is quite extreme

any codes when you plug in a scanner ?

for me my NVO board somehow sucked up a lot of juice, changing it solved the issue completely, now the battery holds 12.5v even after a couple weeks whereas before it would drop to like 11v

 

Go and buy one of these- pull a fuse and it, work through them all. With ignition off very little will be taken a current. Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

IF you have a multimeter you can do a voltage drop across on each fuse. There is a chart that will give an idea of the current draw on that fuse. That will localize the circuit that is the probable cause of the parasitic draw.



https://autolabscopediagnostics.net/parasitic.html
charts

 

I don’t know if the video mentions this, but before testing the voltage across each fuse, put your car to sleep. i.e. find a way of simulating the doors being closed even though they won’t be when you’re doing your voltage checks and wait for, say, an hour. The sleep trigger time varies from vehicle to vehicle. Sometimes things like Window ECUs remain awake for a while, drawing current.

Hopefully you have fuses with cutouts in the back so you can put your voltmeter probes on the metal contacts. If they don’t have cutouts, you may have to
1) substitute them with fuses which do, or….
2) monitor current at the battery (maybe with a clamp type meter) and pull the fuses one by one.

If the 458 has mega fuses that you can test, it might tell you which “branch” of the electrical system the issue is on.

Good luck finding all your fuses. Sometimes Ferrari doesn’t list all of them in the owners handbook.

 

Firstly as some pointed out is very good to test the individual fuses to check for power at them, but as they also said you want to make sure your car is in Sleep Mode which requires putting the sensors or switches that monitor if a door is closed, or else you could get a false reading because the interior light and computer system are awake and drawging current.

You bad tail light could be producing a draw if it bad becasue there is some grounding issues causing the tail light to go bad. As I understand it LEDs, so there is a chance there might be some corrision or something just to look into it, being that appears to be the only thing wrong.

Another very good test to see you overall Parasitic draw when the Car is just sitting is if you test the actual parasitic current draw on the system at the Ground Cable... you would detach the Ground cable from Battery, put an ammeter/mutimeter set to milli-amps inline between your detached ground cable and then back to the negative battery post and you will get a reading. It would typically be in the 50 -90 milliamp range in Porsches and some other Cars, but Ferrari and typcially higher than this, but if you see very high current then you definately know if something in the system, and start tracking fuses to find the circuit doing this. Do it this way would also require you get a reading after the car goes to sleep for correct data.

Last thing is you are saying it definately NOT the Tender/Charger... but are you positive? Are you using the Charger directly to the Ferrari connection? Are you certain that is getting a charge to the battery? Or do you have a seperate pigtail that you connect directly to the battery that you KNOW works. Just Check on that also to rule out any potential issues. We have found that sometimes it can also be a mildly loose terminal, a bad battery charger pigtail connection when a battery is not getting a solid charge.

Lastly we actually have a product that might be very good for you to try... Its called the Antigravity Battery Tracker. I was goiing to make a Post asking for Testers who want to assist us in doing some Voltage Testing/Charging system Testing for the 458/F8/488 cars. We haven't yet done this test in these models.
Shoot me an email if your interested.... we'll get the product free then you put in on your Car and we get some data.... scott @ antigravitybatteries .com or PM me.

 

If your multimeter does have selectable amp ranges and the drain is bad (high current), it might be best to set your ammeter at the highest amp setting first and then go down to milliamps if you don't see a response at the higher settings. Also, don't turn on the car with the ammeter hooked up. The average multimeter can't handle more than 10 amps.

Speaking of pigtails, the negative terminal on the some Ferrari batteries has more than one wire, although looking at a video of a battery replacement on the 458, there is only one. The space under the dash for a clamp type ammeter looks a little limited.

 

Some good points but if you set to Milliamaps firstly, you will get an overload sign if it higher than your setting, and if you set it to high to start it will not show up if it under that that threshold. So best to always start low firstly.

Also the Clamp Meters are not very accurate for tracking milliamp draws, they are generally for larger current draws, also much to bulky for getting into tight battery areas, that is why I was suggesting the inline method. And yes, very important.... do not start or attempt to run the vehicle, connecting this way is only for static electrical draw readings as the car sits without turning on ignition, or starting.

 

You won't blow the internal fuse on the meter? I guess it depends on the type of meter you are using.

Good point. My Fluke 302+ only has a 100mA resolution, but I was thinking that the current draw would need to be significantly greater than this to cause an issue.