I hope someone can perhaps help me diagnose this parasitic power drain issue I am having. I will start by describing my car. It is an AP1 with a oil pressure and EGT gauges from Autometer, both installed by previous owner. My guess is those could be the cause. but they dont seem to power up when the car is off(ie, they are not lit up, and needles down at zero...which isn't to say one of those is the cause..but anyhow...

I took out my multimeter and i removed the positive battery cable, put my tester in line with it..one going to battery other to the cable. As it is, it was a drain of around 80 or so milliamps..too high, i read it needs to be below 50 to be somewhat normal drain(on the average car..not sure about the S2K. so i removed one fuse at a time and tested after each removal. eventually all fuses are out and still its hovering around 63.miliamps for a total decrese of around 20milliamps down with all the regular pull out fuses out.


Ok so i notice there are two fuses in there that are screwed in, labeled 100A and a 40A. ok let's try those. i removed those one at a time..and i noticed this. if i keep each of those in individually ..1 or the other in..drain goes all the way down to zero or .3 milliamps(so all drain gone). but both in there together, it shoots back up to 63milliamps.

I am pretty sure the Alternator is good, but tomorrow I will test that out as well to rule it out as a problem, by running the car and removing a battery connection and see if the car runs fine without the battery, and 2, also check the voltage going to the battery with the car running. Reason I think it's good is, the battery seems ok with daily driving 11 miles to and from work...but if the car sits a few days, battery dies on me.

Ideas? Thanks for reading and the help!

 

bump, and..

update : at a full charge the battery was at 12.6 volts. Turned the car on, removed the battery from the system, car didn't hiccup or anything. Ok alternator can run the car. checked voltage with car on and battery attached, ~14.6 volts. Ok looks like enough juice is hitting my battery to charge it while running.

 

80 mA drain isn't enough to discharge your battery unless you leave it sitting for many months...why are you troubleshooting your current draws?

 

take to a shop and have them load test the battery.