All,
Recently bought a minty 33k mile 2011 Rapide about a month ago. I'm new to AM.
The battery drains after the car sitting for only four days. The battery was replaced within the last 12 months by the previous owner.
I've read that the alarm sounder can often be the culprit, because of the 5-7 year life of it is internal battery. I tried locating the fuse for the alarm system but to no avail.
Any help on fuse location and location of the sounder unit (in the event its bad and needs replacing) would be most appreciated.
In fact, any help whatsoever would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

 

4 days sounds to me like the battery is dead. These cars came with massive batteries from the factory.

 

i might consider charging the battery and then test for a parasitic drain. youtube has a few videos on how to do it. although any service center worth its salt should know how to do it. just takes a few minutes. all that's needed is a multimeter. finding out where it's at is where the difficulty lies, assuming you have one.

of course if a new battery is needed (it's easy enough to test. again, see youtube) one could be installed and see if it fixes the problem.

 

Getting to the battery on the Rapide is a PITA. I think the alarm sounder was replaced on my '12 Rapide several years ago. I am 4 years into my replacement battery and keep it on a CTEK when I remember to do so.

 

On the Vantage, any high parasitic drain is usually caused by a faulty tracker, your 2011 would be the right age for that to be a possibility.

They are easy enough to disconnect, but when the engine management system realises that the tracker has been unplugged, it won't let the engine start, so to accompany the disconnection of the tracker you need to get an AM dealer to change config of the engine management system so it doesn't look for the tracker. I asked JCT600 in Leeds to do mine as part of a service and they charged about £10 to do it.

 

If the alarm module is faulty from a battery issue it displays "Alarm fault" message on the panel. Any aftermarket items added? You definitely need to start with a known good healthy battery and test for a parasitic draw. Lots of electronic devices on board that could be a culprit to your car.

 

Oh yes, I forgot that, a few years ago I didn't connect the ctek when I left the car over winter, when I came back to it in Spring the battery was completely and utterly dead, which allowed the alarm battery to go flat, so it went into a fault condition. When I charged the battery the alarm was still registering a fault, think it was Alarm Service Required. The car was going in for its annual service so they cleared the fault for me.

Surprising footnote to that story, I used a couple of different chargers to try to rejuvenate the battery, and it made a complete recovery, and went on for another three years. I only changed it then because it was 11 years old, and I wanted a LiFePOP4 battery, so the original is now in semi-retirement, in the garage providing power to my QuickJacks.