well, my cars been sitting doing nothing for the last 3 months ( i got my license suspended). in that time, i decided to do heads and a cam, and some other stuff, so i start tearing everything down. well just before i stopped driving, my amp died, so i sent it back to alpine to have them fix it, and when i got it back i decided to test everything out, to see if theyd done their job. much to my chagrin, my battery is dead. so earlier tonight, i went out and put in a brand spankin new optima red top and threw it in. i connected the power terminal, and when i touched the negative, it sparked to holy hell, and so did my alt. power line (which isnt connected. it was touching my power steering pulley)..

when i think back, i cant remember when my car HASNT sparked when i attached the terminals, regardless of the fact that the keys never turned, or even in, when im putting the battery back on.

can anyone shed some insight?

 

seriously? nobody?

 

Mine does that too, and if I don't drive the car for a couple days it will drain the battery.

 

so the problem is the sparking on the ground terminal you get when you connect the ground cable to the - battery terminal?

i am pretty sure that is normal. there are circuits which are always powered in the car (door locks and radio clock/memory come to mind).

sparking elsewhere, or sparking *after* its connected, not so good.

maybe every car i've worked on is broke.

 

i guess that makes sense...

and the "after sparking" wouldnt be a problem if everything was hooked up, which it will be soon.

so does everyone else have that problem?

 

so, no one else?

 

As mentioned there are circuts that are always powered. You will always get sparks when hooking up a battery.

 

Enough to drain the battery over a period of a couple days?

 

Hook up a meter to measure the amps on the positive wire when the key is turned off. That will tell you if you have a significant drain on the battery. If you find a load, start looking for the source. Use the meter to check the draw on various circuits, pull fuses to see if the current flow drops, etc.

 

I did that only I went to the post that has all the positive feeds. I pulled them one at a time and no spark. My ground cable at the battery sparks like there is quite a load on the system when I touch it to the neg battery terminal. More spark than should be even with the loads that stay on the battery when sitting. I did talk to another electrician at work and during the conversation he stated he had the same problem with one of his vehicles. He found that the battery was draining thru the alternator when the key is off. I haven't checked that yet but it's another place to look.

 

I'm having this exact same problem

FWIW i had my car on a battery charger to charge the battery and when it was around 12.77 volts i took it off the charger, and while holding the volt meter to it, it driopped to 12.76 about 20 seconds later, then 12.75, 12.74 etc..... this can't be a good thing