Date: 18 Mar 2003 02:20:17 GMT From: davehinznopsamcop.net Subject: Re: 1989 has battery drain
Someone who looks an awful lot like Amy Young-Leith <alyoungnopsammarble.net> wrote: > I few weeks ago I bought a 1989 900 (non-turbo). It's a POS with over > 225k, but looks great and is fun to drive. I paid diddly for it so I > figured if I had to tinker with it... well, it would be a challenge. > I seem to have a power short somewhere. The battery will be DEAD, and > it'll jump start just fine, and charge the battery up enough to start > again if you shut it off. But overnight, it drains back down to zilch. > This happened once when I first got it... then didn't happen for a > while, and now is happening all the time. Is your power antenna acting up? If it gets stuck in almost-up or almost-down position (cold weather, for instance), the motor will keep drawing current, doing just that. If that's the case, the easiset thing to do I found was to let the antenna go up, pull the radio, yank the antenna fuse behind it, and just leave it up. Worked on my '88 900Turbo, I'd expect the '89 to be similar. > My first thought is to replace the battery, but a few people have said > that since it'll charge back up, they don't think that's it. It had a > new alternator on it about a year ago. Yes, that's not it. Something is draining it. If your antenna is behaving, it's time to start pulling fuses and measuring current draw with the car up. A multimeter is what you need, but be advised that many/most of them are fused at 2 amps, and your draw may be more than that if there's a huge draw. You could also measure voltage across the fuses (which conveniently have access points for just that) in the main fuseblock, to see which one has voltage across it when the car is off (it'll be in millivolt range). Any voltage shows that there is current through that fuse - proceed accordingly. Replacing the battery will just cause you to blow 80 or 100 bucks on a new battery to drain. Get it figured out before you do that, no point in wrecking a new battery. > The answer may be that I have to take it into a professional, but > that'll have to wait a while. Anything a handy but car-dumb person can > do to self diagnose? If you're comfortable with a VOM, go for it. Or, find someone who is, and give 'em a case of beer or something. That'd be about the going rate. Dave Hinz
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