I recommend anyone that is having battery drain or parasitic drain problems to have the ITB performed. Use this link: https://x.infinitihelp.com/forum/loc...s.php?catid=63 to find the ITB for your specific chassis/year and get to it. Parasitic battery drains can lower your confidence with your vehicle. You'll be less confident to drive your car on long trips or leave it parked for extended amounts of time not knowing if it will start again without the assistance of a trickle charger.

The purpose of this thread is to document chasing my ITB10-010c service bulletin for anyone else experiencing the battery drain issue. Hopefully, this does not cost an arm and a leg. So far I'm about $515 dollars in after doing the service bulletin, it will cost more after they do further troubleshooting and continuity testing.

I've had my G for about 3 months now and in that time, I've replaced the Optima Yellow top it came with a new one from O'Reilly, it was good until I returned after a month-long vacation. The battery had gone completely flat in about 3 weeks. I warrantied it and haven't driven the car much.

After searching on this forum and Google, I found out about ITB10-010c.

I came to the conclusion that while I would be able to change out the valve, I would not be able to do the ECM update.

I took it to Infiniti in Oceanside, CA. The service manager, Gonzo, is very knowledgeable about this Service Bulletin and didn't give me any problems with taking on the work, but it wouldn't be covered since the car is long out of warranty. The cost for the service bulletin is $515 + tax.

They took the car and worked on it the following day. They updated the ECM, changed the valve, and kept the car for observation.

The next week, I got a heads up the car still had a nonstart issue. They asked if I wanted to diagnose the drain, at this point, I had no choice and went ahead with the diagnosis.

So far, they have performed a continuity test. The dealership discovered the large parasitic drain was coming from the CD CHANGER which I don't even use so they disconnected that. There's one more small drain that they are looking for. I'll update this thread when I know more.

 

A current draw test was performed on the car before and after the ITB was performed

538mA before the ITB was performed

The car was monitored for a few days and was dead next time they tried to start it so they did more current draw tests and found that the CD changer fuse was drawing a lot of current.

148mA after the ITB was performed with CD changer unplugged

They wanted to find what was still drawing double the current and they found that the 10 fuse which controls the BCM was pulling power as well.

86mA after the 10 fuse is removed. I am happy with this parasitic draw. If I decide to keep it, I'll keep it on a battery tender or put an inline fuse holder to turn it off whenever I'm leaving the car parked for extended amounts of time.

I hope this helps anyone having battery drain problems!

 

That all sounds terribly frustrating.

If you're worried about parasitic drain killing your battery, are you in a position to use a trickle charger when leaving the car undriven for a long period? They only cost $30 give or take, and are really simple to hook up.

 

I purchased a CTEK - 40-206 MXS 5.0 for this car specifically. Thankfully I can get usage out of the charger by using it on my drift car when the G problem gets wrapped up.

 

These cars have some amount of parasitic drain (memories, energized solenoids, etc) all the time. One of them is the BCM that is monitoring the battery (!). Anything more than about 4 weeks seems to kill the battery.

Due to a bunch of factors, hadn't driven mine since June. New battery in March, optima red top. Now it can't charge over 7V, and there's too much internal resistance for the trickle charger to work (it errors out after about 15 minutes).

 

Must be a "post pandemic" bad batch of Red Top's from Optima. Someone else on this forum had a dud after only a few months. Mine is five (5) years and going strong.

Trickle chargers are a must for ANY of these cars that sit for extended periods of time.

 

Updated post #2 with my final results. I could have left the car there for further diagnosis but I'm in the process of selling it (with full disclosure to the new owner)

That battery is probably dead and past the point of return. I recommend getting a new one maybe a lithium ion with the secondary start built in.

Buddyclub USA started selling these, they're light and priced competitively for a race battery with a built in jump start cell. https://www.megalifebattery.com/about