1987 325 Battery woes
I am having some serious issues with my car. Long story short, I went on a 5 month deployment and during that time my wife took out the battery. As soon as I got back I charged up the battery, brought it out to the car and installed it. The problem is that the previous owner had replaced the positive terminal with a generic black cable at one point (something I had never realized because I had never had to remove the battery before). I put the battery in and in my excitement I didn't realize that it was backwards. As soon as I turned the red key a fuse burst into flames and the starter motor started smoking. I immediately broke the circuit and turned the battery around and it started right up again. But I now have an extreme parasitic drain that I believe is from a short. It runs and drives just fine, when it's jumped the alternator will charge the battery to the point that I can turn the car on again but the battery will run down within an hour even with the ignition key out. I thought it might be the starter so I replaced that but it is still pulling power. I looked at the wiring diagrams for the car (I am an amateur at car electronics at best) and it looks like the only things that could be pulling with the ignition key out are the starter, alternator, ABS, and the car accessories (locks, interior lights, etc). I removed the fuses for both the accessories and the ABS and the situation didn't change. So now I am clueless as to what could be causing this. Am I missing something? Thanks for your help :)
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Use your VM to see if you can find out which circuit is pulling current when the car is off. Otherwise use trial and error to take circuits out of the system and check for a drain in that way.
It's also possible that your battery discharged beyond recoverable during the time you were away.
The absolute worst cast scenario would be a bit of leakage through insulation. -
Thank you for the advice. I'm not sure what you mean by VM?? The battery was not working after that happened so I replaced it with a new one. Do you know the best way to identify where leakage could be occuring without pulling out the wiring and visually inspecting it?Comment
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Voltmeter, use it one each circuit, either at the fuse box or at the end of each circuit with the key off, you may see leakage, but it is possible that it's so small you won't.Comment
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You can disconnect the -- terminal from the battery and connect a multimeter between the -- battery terminal and the wire. Turn off all internal lights and disconnect the trunk light.
The current should be about 0.015A. If more, start disconnecting fuses to find out which circuit consumes the most.
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