High current draw with car off - Was: What's the best replacementfuel line?

[Scott Phillips]

Kevin, 

Sorry no firsthand experience here, but I wouldn't leave a car for a few
weeks with the battery connected and expect it to start. I would put a
solar trickle charger in the window to keep that battery from depleting
itself (That's what the dealerships do with current cars). 

Whenever I put a car into storage, I would just disconnect the battery
and when I came back re-connect it and start right up. 

Re- your specific issue. 300mA to excessive.. not really the circuits
weren't too efficient and you can still have any number of unknown
components with a drain.

Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: quattro-bounces at audifans.com [mailto:quattro-bounces at audifans.com]
On Behalf Of Kevin Hoff
Sent: Saturday, December 16, 2006 10:26 PM
To: 'Quattro List'
Subject: High current draw with car off - Was: What's the best
replacementfuel line?

A follow up from a while back and new question:

I ended up getting 5/16" steel brake line from the same store as before.
This stuff is made for big trucks with air brakes.  It's almost exactly
the
same size as the metric fuel lines that came on the car and is coated
with a
similar epoxy as well.  Pretty nice stuff, although it would have been
nice
to find Aluminum.

So now this old car is throwing every trick in the book at me...  It was
killing the battery overnight even with a fresh new one.  I connected
the
DMM to it and discovered a continuous draw of 4A even with EVERYTHING
turned
off.  Crazy.  So after tons of debugging, sealing cracked/shorted wires
in
the trunk, cleaning every connector in the engine bay, pulling every
fuse
and relay, and pulling the radio, I still ended up with a draw of about
300
mA - enough to kill the battery in about a week...  It turns out that
almost
all of that draw is from the trip computer - unplugging the trip
computer
from the back of the instrument panel reduces the draw to 5 mA and
unplugging the clock power reduces the draw to virtually zero.

So my question:  Is ~300 mA the REAL draw that I should expect from the
trip
computer?  It seems excessive, as the battery could be pulled quite low
if
the car was parked for a few weeks.  My other car (a Subaru Impreza)
pulls
about 25 with the alarm on, less with it off.  Does anyone have a 4kq
with a
working trip computer and no known electrical problems that could
measure
the load?  You would need to ensure that the stereo is unplugged,
including
any add-on amps, and take the key out with the doors closed.  Then pull
the
battery ground and put a decent digital multimeter between the ground
wire
and the - post on the battery.

Thanks for reading my novel,
--Kevin Hoff
Durham, NC

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kneale Brownson [mailto:kneale at coslink.net] 
> Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 7:47 AM
> To: Kevin Hoff; 'Quattro List'
> Subject: RE: What's the best replacement fuel line?
> 
> Fuel line usually is steel.  If it's the right inside 
> diameter, the kind of stuff he used for the brakes should 
> work for the fuel.
> 
> As an alternative, you can use a flexible hose product 
> designed for supplying high-pressure fuel.  Sometimes called 
> fuel injector hose.  Any good FLAPS should handle it.  Be 
> certain to get the special hose clamps designed for high 
> pressue fuel line application.  Only real problem with this 
> stuff is it's much larger outside diameter than steel lines 
> and won't fit inside the clips Audi uses to hold the fuel ines.
> 
> 
> 
> At 11:53 PM 10/30/2006 -0500, Kevin Hoff wrote:
> >That's very true but before I walk the gauntlet (the guy is pretty
> >crotchety!) I'd like to figure out what material to request.

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