My battery won't stay charged longer than a day or two to start the car up. Is there a way to search for it to see what is drawing the current? Any special techniques or methods? I can get access to a multimeter because I'm sure that's necessary. Any help is appreciated.

 

Before you start searching for a drain, ask yourself these questions?

Do I start with a "full" charge?

Does the battery need to be replaced?

I realize that the answers are probably Yes and No respectively, however some doen't realize that bad batteries won't hold a charge and to charge a "good" battery one needs to put it on a charger and not just drive around (which does not charge a battery). Just checking.

 

Actually I'm sure something is draining my battery...

My Optima Red Top died so used a friend's Red Top that was on a slow charge for about a day and a half and that also died. The alternator is putting out 14 volts.

Back to my original questions...

 

Connect a meter set to amps between the battery and one of the battery cables. See what the reading is and start pulling fuses until any big drain goes away. There will be a very small drain from the clock and PCM (milliamps). Do not try to start the car with the meter connected! If you find a fuse that kills the drain, you will need to pursue that circuit for problems or aftermarket equipment hooked to it.

 

My first guess would ve your alt. The easiest way to test this is, disconnect the cable at the alt. It goes from tha battery to the alt. Make suer it doesn't touch ground. Let the car sit over night, with the cable disconnected, see if it starts the next morning. I guessing, it is an open diode. Which, will let the bettery drain straight to ground.

yes, once the car is running, the alt will charge like normal.

 

disconnect your negative battery cable. get you a car test light 12V. connect the tester between the neg. cable and the neg. battery post and see if the light comes on. If it comes on, then somethin is draining the battery. If its on, start pullin fuses till the light goes out. whatever fuse turns off the light, thats the circuit you need to inspect.

make sure your door is closed when you are checkin the test light. an open door jam will of course turn on the light.

 

TTT

I have updates:

-My car has a constant 2.7-2.8 amp draw. I tested this by having only the negative attached to the battery. Then I tested the current between the + terminal on the battery and the + bolt.
-I pulled every single fuse in the engine bay fuse block and the interior fuse block and it did nothing. I tested my alky system, my gauge lighting, my stereo (deck and amps), and just about every other accessory I installed myself. I even disconnected the distribution box (little red box) from the battery and the 2.8 amp draw is still there.
-The entire time, my alternator was disconnected from the battery so it is not that.

WHAT GIVES HERE????? Anybody please dammit, I will mail you a crispy 20 dollar bill for information that leads to the apprehension of this short.

 

Disconnect the starter and test again. Make sure you situate the starter cable so it can't ground out.

 

Are you running an electric fuel pressure gauge or anything that requires power? Make sure it's drawing power from an interrupted source. I had mine hooked up wrong once before and it would kill a battery in about 2 days.

 

I am running quite a few accessories but they are all wired cleanly. In fact, I actually removed all connections to the positive terminal on the battery and still saw a power drain. Is that even possible? Am I doing something wrong? I couldn't believe that after I disconnected the starter the drain was still there. Can anybody shed some light on this? Am I using the multimeter incorrectly???

 

There are only 3 places the stock + battery cable goes.
Starter
Alternator
Red junction block

If you have all those disconnected and nothing extra connected to the + cable, then you might have a chafed cable that is slightly grounding out.

To make sure your meter will read zero, cross (touch together) your leads and make sure that you see 0 amps.

 

If that's the case, how do I go about finding that? I thought that if there is no connections to the + side of the battery that it is impossible for current to get anywhere. Is there some other power source in the car that a chaffed cable can draw current from? I'm confused. Thanks for the tips though Shoebox, my buddy really appreciated your help with the EGR on his car too.

 

I mean a portion of the cable(s) that you have disconnected might be chafed. It's a long shot, but I don't know what else to tell you. Be absolutely certain that you have those cables isolated and not touching ground anywhere.

 

I will go back and check it right now and report back.

I do have another problem... it's a miss. I don't know what is causing it, my opti has less than 10k on it and it is original GM piece. The coil has less than 20k on it and it is a brand new stock coil. My car was down for about a month and I finally started it. The miss developed after that hibernation period which happened to be the same day I got my true duals welded up. I have 3" true duals w/ no cats but I doubt that would cause a pretty bad miss at all rpm's all load levels. I'm almost sure it's ignition related. I replaced my crane box with an MSD digital 6 plus but that's apparently not the problem even though that crane box took a dump on itself. Any suggestions on that one? Any way to track down the problem?

 

I traced all 3 wires coming off of the battery and there are no shorts up until the point in the circuit where I disconnected them from the battery. The alt wire is perfect, the starter wire is perfect all the way to the starter and is not grounding anywhere, the distribution box wire is perfect too. With those 3 wires disconnected there is still between 2.5 and 2.8 amps. I don't get this bull****? How is that possible? The meter is perfect, I have only used it twice it is practically brand new and I tested other things. It reads 0 when not touching anything and it reads zero when I touch the probes together. And no I'm not smoking crack rocks, everything I said is valid, I double and triple checked to make sure there are no shorts.

Unless I'm missing something, there must be a small gremlin running on a wheel operating a generator somewhere in my car. I'm about this close to having an electrician come look at it, how much damn troubleshooting can I do???