No start - battery or starter?

[aero four]

Car cranks extremely weakly, stopping after two or three cranks. Battery light is on with key in and all electric accessories work.

Battery is at 11.6v with key in, 11.8 with key out. Load from positive lead to battery terminal is 85 mA.

Is the battery bad like I suspect? Does 85 mA indicate a parasitic load that could be draining it?

[Turbo_ZA]

go out and get a hydrometer, if it's not a sealed type battery. That will let you check the specific gravity of each cell and will quickly determine if you have a bad unit.
85mA is not a very high drain but anything over 60 usually indicates something is misbehaving.
Also your battery voltage is way low, you won't crank with that.
1. Check battery with hydrometer, replace if bad
2. Charge battery - car should crank
3. Start looking for the component causing the high(er) drain.

[cvriv.charles]

Originally Posted by Turbo_ZA

go out and get a hydrometer, if it's not a sealed type battery. That will let you check the specific gravity of each cell and will quickly determine if you have a bad unit.
85mA is not a very high drain but anything over 60 usually indicates something is misbehaving.
Also your battery voltage is way low, you won't crank with that.
1. Check battery with hydrometer, replace if bad
2. Charge battery - car should crank
3. Start looking for the component causing the high(er) drain.

Your so smart

[Turbo_ZA]

my momma don't raise no fools!
more to the point my old man said "RTFM" and if you break it call me.

[thekidd]

you need at least 12.0 DCVs for the car to start. Ill say battery

[exitwound]

I'm having too, yet again, a parasitic draining problem. My ampmeter has a blown fuse and of course finding a shop open on the weekend that sells fuses isn't easy. With that, I can't check my drain until Monday. My drain last I checked was .68mA.

But at 11.9V, the car would not even engage the starter. At 12.1V, the starter would click but not turn the engine. At 12.3V the car would start fine. At 12.6V, there were no problems either.

If you take the battery to Advance Auto, or Autozone, they'll check it for failing to hold a voltage, if it's drained, etc, for free.