Woman spent a small fortune replacing her Toyota Tacoma’s battery three times before a mechanic found the real issue

Few things are as frustrating as car trouble that won’t go away, especially when it involves your Toyota Tacoma’s battery and a sneaky parasitic battery drain.

It’s the kind of issue that makes you question your sanity as you keep replacing batteries only to end up with a dead car again.

While some car problems are easy to spot, like a burnt-out headlight or flat tire, parasitic drains are the ultimate mystery gremlins of the motoring world.

One unlucky Tacoma owner learned this the hard way after burning through not one, not two, but three batteries in a single year.

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The owner replaced her Toyota Tacoma’s battery three times

Determined to solve the mystery, the woman brought her 2019 Toyota Tacoma to a technician.

She was quite confident she had pinpointed the problem: a faulty tire pressure monitoring sensor on the front left wheel.

But as it turned out, her theory was way off.

The technician ran a parasitic draw test, which is a simple check that measures how much current is being pulled from the battery when the car is off.

The test quickly confirmed there was parasitic battery drain.

Then, as he poked around the driver’s footwell, he spotted something blinking faintly in the dark: a small diagnostic dongle plugged into the OBD-II port.

Those little devices, often used for tracking, monitoring, or running car diagnostics, are harmless most of the time.

However, this innocuous device was actually the culprit.

Once the tech unplugged it, the draw disappeared instantly, and the multimeter reading dropped back to normal.

The woman’s recurring battery woes weren’t due to bad luck or faulty sensors at all.

Instead, they were caused by her own device, silently draining her Toyota Tacoma’s battery every night.

Try removing anything you’ve plugged in recently

It’s a surprisingly common mistake.

A parasitic battery drain can be caused by anything from a glovebox light that won’t turn off to damaged wiring or even a poorly installed aftermarket radio.

The key to solving them is to start simple: check your lights, test the battery’s age, and make sure your alternator is working properly.

If you’ve recently plugged in something new, whether it’s a Bluetooth tracker or a ‘smart scanner’, try removing it first.

For this Tacoma owner, the solution turned out to be as easy as unplugging a gadget.

Unfortunately for her, she had to replace her Toyota Tacoma’s battery three times to figure that out.

Considering how rugged a Toyota Tacoma is built to be, maybe it’s best to check for user error before blaming the truck.

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