OK, here’s another issue on my 2002 X-Type. Over the past week I noticed the the car was cranking slower than usual. Last evening, I saw the interior lights were dim, I tried to start the car and with the first two attempts the dash lights will go out and the starter would only click. On the third attempt, it would crank slowly, but the start. I drove the car, and everything seemed ok. I did notice that the A and B trip meter for reset to 0.0 after being parked. Also, the radio would turn off and back on after a second or two. The clock would not reset, but continued to come back with the correct time.
This morning, same thing, dim interior lights, click, click, slow crank, start. I cleaned the terminals, and put on a battery charger. It registered 10.4 volts. Is there some way to chase down a possible drain? Or find out to see if there’s some load on the battery when the car is parked?
Oh, no codes.

 

There was a thread and some discussion perhaps about 15-18 months ago on someone battling the same type of battery drain.
The poster then was measuring a constant current of over 100mA (I think) from the battery when the car was completely sitting idle when it should probably be under 20mA.

I think they tracked the problem to the climate control system, and if memory serves one of the solenoid valves was not cycling back to its resting position which caused the climate controller to stay partially awake and therefore it was "chatting" to the other systems in the car.
I think they initially deduced this by putting a digital multi-meter in series with their battery line on the current measuring settings (don't try to start the car or turn on high current features - as you will overload the meter) and seeing what the current draw was, then they worked through pulling ancillary fuses to see if they could start to isolate the circuit responsible.

Have a search to see if you can locate that thread in the X-Type forum.

 

You have not mentioned the age of the battery…the fact that you put it on a charger and it was not anywhere near 12 volts tells the story. You need to either charge the battery fully, or if it is more than 4 years old, replace it - but, and this is important - fully charge the new battery. They are rarely, almost never fully charged at purchase.
Suspect the battery itself first rather than chasing a quiescent drain.

 

RBaczek, for a problem like yours, like was mentioned, start with the battery if it has a few years on it. BUt, if you find that the new battery did not solve your issue, then finding the circuit is fairly simply. What you are going to need is a multimeter with a "MV" scale on it. NOw, what you are going to do is start with the engine bay fuse box. If you look at the top of every fuse, you will see 2 metal tabs that are slightly recessed. What you are going to do is measure between those 2 tabs on the same fuse. The multimeter should remain reading 0 MV (atleast something very small). If you get something that is dramatically different than the other fuses, note the fuse number. When you are done with the engine bay fuse box, move on to the passenger area fuse box and repeat. The circuit(s) that have the much higher voltage indications are going to be your problem children. NOte, the circuit with the GEM on it is going to read higher because you are going to have the door open and this is going to cause the interior lights to be one, resulting in a false positive indication. You can get around this by taking a screw driver and after opening the door, rotate the latch of the door until the lights go out. At this point, you can treat the GEM circuit like all the others.

 

Great suggestions. Put the battery on a Schumacher charger. After the charge, it registered bad battery and displayed “SUL” for a sulfated battery. My charger has desulfator, so I did that. However, the battery being 6 years old, desulfate is only temporary. The battery was an Interstate. I took the car to an Interstate distributor. They tested the battery (after a 40 mile drive), and said the battery was definitely bad as it was not holding the rated cranking amps. Put a new battery in, and as expected, it cranked very fast.
Now I’ll check it today and see if it drained. If so, I’ll follow Thermo’s instructions.