85 5k battery drain

[Henry A Harper III]

On Sunday, April 15, 2001 5:32 PM, DGraber460 at aol.com [SMTP:DGraber460 at aol.com] 
wrote:
> My daughters 85 5kt (non quat) has had a dead battery every 3 days. I had the
> battery checked which shows fine. Once fully charged, the car starts and runs
> fine and shows no alternator light. I therefore feel the alternator is not
> the culprit.
> I remember a post that suggested pulling a battery cable and hooking a
> voltmeter in line and pulling fuses till the meter shows zero. When I tried
> this, the meter read 12.54 volts with no change as each (and all) fuses were
> pulled.
> Am I correct in thinking that this shows a drain on the system?
> If so, what could be another method for diagnosis?

If your voltmeter has a "DC amps" setting, this would be the time to use it - 
amps are measured in series, volts are measured in parallel. Putting a 
voltmeter in series in a circuit will only show the potential of the circuit, 
essentially opening the circuit. Most multimeters have a limited (~10 amps) 
current-measuring capability so don't do anything that pulls a lot of current 
(like start the car) while playing around here.

HTH
Henry Harper
Rice '92 BSEE w/CS (who shouldn't have slept in that circuits class, but all I 
do is play with computers anyway!)
http://www.srv.net/~hah
1991 200 quattro, 112k
1988 GTI 16v, 217k