Hello. I have a 95 and the battery goes dead after about 2 days sitting. Its pulling about 200ma. The drain stops after i pull the interior lights fuse under the hood, All of the lights turn on and off like they are supposed to. I have replaced and adjusted both door switches. The cargo switch is not working at all and does not turn on lights when the hatch is opened. I have disconnected it and i have a new one on order. It does turn the lights on when i jump the wires so i know the switch is dead. Does anyone have a link to a diagram of all the wiring running off of the interior lights fuse or have any suggestions where i should look next? Thanks

 

What brand battery and how old is it?

I would suggest that the first thing you do is charge the battery completely and then actually measure the drain on the battery with a quality Volt Ohm meter. Commonly available meters are limited to 10 amps continuous but that should be enough. To test the drain you set the multimeter to the AMPS setting which frequently needs test lead re-location before testing the circuit. Then disconnect the battery ground wire and put the meter leads in between the battery ground and the ground wire that connects to the battery. This should give you a real discharge number if in fact it is from the car. DO NOT DO THIS IF YOU ARE NOT COMFORTABLE WITH ELECTRICITY!

After this test then charge the battery back up completely and then watch it for a week of so with nothing connected to it. What you are looking for is whether the car actually has a electrical drain on the battery or is the battery self-discharging at too high a rate. A battery that has been in use can sometimes have an internal short which would play out like a large drain on your battery. Depending on the type of battery you have the self discharge can be very large or virtually non-existent.

Another way to determine where the drain is coming from is to get one of the devices from Harbor Freight that plugs into a fuse socket and gives you a digital readout of what is going through that particular fuse. You simply test each fuse to see what is draining power from your battery. I have two of these devices, 1-20 amp and 1-30 amp model. They are handy for those who don't like Multi-meters.

Good Luck and let us know what you find!

 

Its an interstate battery. Its only a couple years old. I ran the meter from the neg wire to the neg of the battery and watched the amps. There is a constant 200ma pull from the battery until i disconnect the interior lights fuse, Than it drops down to the normal 20-30ma pull.

 

Check out this diganostic from the FSM

 

So before I go into the lengthy description of how to do a proper parasitic draw test, make sure the glove box light and the vanity lights in the sun visors are out.

 

Dome lite relay! Under hood lites, these are always a problem !

 

The courtesy fuse circuit also powers the radio in my 88. So, if you have a factory radio is the clock off when the ignition is off? It should be.

 

It sounds to me like you have a good understanding of the testing procedure. Just to verify, when you're testing, are the under-hood lamps off? Are the doors closed and the interior lamps timed out (off)? Sun visor vanity lamps, center console light off? Do your power antenna, horn, and power door locks work properly? There's a lot of stuff on this fuse. You'll learn to appreciate the FSM to verify what's on this circuit in your car.

The residual current drain on my '84 is 13 mA.

 

Always??? (Is this fake news?)

 

Lol …

 

Glove box light, hood lights , vanity mirror lights have all been disabled. The cargo lights do come on when the drivers side door is opened and also when i jump the wires at the cargo hatch switch. When i let the car sit for about 30 minutes with the ground wire for battery off, than check with the meter from ground wire to ground on battery, it goes down to normal range of 20ma, but when i open and close the driver side door, the lights come on like normal and the meter reads 400+ma, and than the lights go off after a minute, and the meter reads 200ma and stays. So i only get the drain when the lights are triggered as it seems.

 

So its sounds to me like you are doing the draw test wrong.
You need a draw test tool or you can try the jumper wire method.
Put it back together electrically so each system is whole. You don't have to put trim panels all back but everything electrical needs to be able to function.
Disconnect the negative cable.
Connect a heavy gauge jumper wire between the cable and the battery post.
Open a door and cycle the key without cranking the starter. Your jumper wire better be heavy enough to carry the amperage or it will melt, but without a draw test tool, you do what you have to do.
Close the door and observe the interior lights time out, as well as everything else that you can see with your eyes, such as the power antenna ect …
Now connect your ammeter, without disturbing the jumper wire. It should read zero because whatever current is flowing, should pass through the jumper wire.
Now remove the jumper wire and observe the meter readings for the next ten minutes or so.
At the end of ten minutes you should have less than 50 milliamps of draw, probably more like 25
Also, leave you keyless entry fob way out of distance, like in your house or something.
If at anytime during this process the jumper wire connections are disturbed before you intend to, then start over.
The problem here is the keyless entry system and the ac programmer will not "time out" properly unless you follow the above process or use an actual draw test tool.

 

Ill give that a shot and report back thanks.

 

Ok, So i think i did what you where getting at. I hooked up a 10 gauge wire jumper from battery to ground. Opened door turned key to on, everything came alive. Than turned key off and removed key from car. shut door and all the lights turned off. hooked up meter and it read 0.00. unhooked 10 gauge ground and meter stayed 0.00. 10 min nothing. So i opened the door and the lights came on. shut the door and lights when off. meter jumped form 4.90 to 0.200 to 0.01 and stayed. I dont know what this means but it seems kinda low? Also the antenna is broken and does not work.

 

Why is my post being delayed?

 

Hello again xFaKx,

Thanks for the specific answers you provided. I am a big Interstate Battery fan, they make great products.

So now we know that the car will go back to the 20-30 mA drain once disconnected for a short time. When you reconnected the battery it jumped up to where it was before (~200 mA) with the interior light coming on after opening the door. If you remove the fuse keeping the interior lights off what happens to your battery? Just the 20 mA load? Have tried leaving the fuse out for a couple days and be sure that "it" is the circuit that is hurting the car.
I have heard of issues with the timer that maintains the lights on for a couple minutes after shutdown. I have not looked them up here on this site recently but I have heard people talk about the timers failing and the lights drain the car down.
Judging from your statements you seem know how to use a multi-meter properly. The test you did is the right one, I have never heard of doing it any other way and I have worked on electronics for 45+ years.
The tool I mentioned from Harbor Freight cost less than $15 and will show the load on any fuse circuit up to 30 amps. Here is what I am talking about:
Sorry the image is so big but you get the idea. You plug it in where the fuse goes and watch the numbers, it will show exactly how much is drawn at each fuse. It is replacing the meter in this case. One of these might help narrow down your search or just continue using the meter and it's built in current shunt. These tools are very useful when trying to determine the correct fuse size on any new circuit.

I still wish you the very best! It sounds like you are on the right track looking into the interior lights and their timers associated with them.
Chris

 

Ya i ordered a fuse buddy from amazon. I tried to make a long reply post but it wont post it without admin approval?

 

That's weird.
I don't think that is what is happening, but it could be.
I'm pretty sure you only have a certain amount of time between when you open the reply window, and when you actually submit the reply.
If you wait to long, then you lose everything you typed.

 

Electronics ? or cars …
If you want to "hear" about how to do it properly, you can read post 12 or the service manual.

 

After trying it PatternDayTrader's way it now sits at 0.01, So i dunno if that did something or what. Seems a bit low? It does jump up when i open the door and lights turn on so i now the current is there.