Originally Posted By Magnumguy
feets, what settings should you have a meter on to do this? I know ABSOLUTELY nothing about this stuff. I have one kinda doing the same thing, but it takes several days to drain the battery.



Depends on your meter. On my Fluke I like the 10 amp setting as long as I have the key off and make sure the lights are all off. Then when I hook it up I watch to make sure it dont jump up to near 10 as it would have a big drain and kill a battery real fast with a 10 or more amp draw. Then as long as the meter is no where near 10 I use that lower scale as the normal draw should be 50 milli-amps or less. Even a glovebox lite draw of 250 milli-amps can kill a battery in a few nights. Many times when you first hook the meter up in series between the battery and cable you might see a higher draw then normal and you will want to wait a good 20 minutes as some of the computers on the car can take up to 20 minutes to time out which can be normal. But yours sounds like a good size draw. I also like to open the drivers door and either remove the door jam switch or tape it closed so if you want to pull fuses in the car to trace the draw you dont have to worry about the interior lites coming on when you open the drivers door. That way the door is open and the door jam switch is closed or unhooked. Ron

Last edited by 383man; 05/20/16 05:50 AM.