How did you connect your meter? DId you remove the negative battery terminal, and connect the meter between the cable and battery? If not, do that, set the meter to read amps and see what the reading is. You will get some current reading, as the computer and some other accessories draw some current. That should be less than an amp, however. Then, one by one, pull the fuses and see which one causes a significant drop in the current reading.

I second this motion.

It sounds to me that the meter was not properly connected to test current. The meter not only needs to be connected the way Archron described but the multimeter leads need to be plugged in to the correct position.



A typical multimeter. The black lead will be plugged into the COM jack and the red lead will plug into the 10A jack. If the durrent draw is less than 1 amp, you might have to relocate the red lead into the mA jack in order to display the value (depends on the individual meter)

Alllllrrriiight! I'll try the meter again. If this does not work then will the manual disconnect be a good quick fix or not?

Assuming that your battery is in good shape physically and electrically...yes, disconnecting the battery will certainly prevent anything in the car from discharging it. The thing to keep in mind is that as we have no idea what may be draining the juice from the battery, we don't know if whatever it is may not cause some type of problem down the road. That could range from a minor inconvenience, to something serious.

It will just be a quik fix so I can save enough $$ to possibly get it back to my awesome mech dude, if i cant find it. I'm working on it this weekend when I get off work(at 2 am!),I'll be back in touch! :P

A quick and dirty fix would be to go to an RV place and get an el cheapo battery on/off switch. I have one on my convertible, cost me $15 and installed in 10 minutes.

My dad had an impala that did this also so he installed the disconnect switch.
PITA to pop the hood every night. He never did find the voltage drain but I suspect his voltmeter wasn't set to m/a.

I have experienced just this type of drain on a previous car (Olds Cutlas Cierra) and about pulled my hair out trying to fix it myself.

I eventually gave up and took it to an Auto Electric specialist I'd heard of that really knew his stuff and wasn't a parts swapper. In less than 5 minutes he found a worn wire that was causing a partial grounding. Not a hard ground that would blow a fuse, but a small, intermittent drawing down of the battery which would also then kill the alternator...and so on...

Used the voltmeter again per your instructions and noticed a drain only when the radio and the pwr strg,rw defog,& dr lks fuse were pulled. Dblchked the auto level sys fuse and it was pulled when I replaced the rear suspension. I also noticed that when I shut off the car and locked it up for the night, that my radio was still on and my keys were in my hand!! I removed the radio and locked it up. I will attack the wiring for the radio nxt,because it is the easiest to get to The wiring that runs over the top of the engine, can it be there is a wire that has melted and is grounding there? It looks like it could go to the pwr strng pump? :?:

Removed radio, found 2 exposed wires. Fixed that, then chkd the neg batt cable and found the wire going to the starter was touching and melting the new cable. Fixed that. No problems for about 2 wks now. WOO WOO!