[s-cars] Current draw/dead battery "Did It Fix It?!"

[audijim at comcast.net]

Happy Holiday's All!

As stated in the previous exciting episode of "Current Draw/Dead Battery", I removed a Kenwood CD power control module in the hope of that was bleeding current and staying powered "ON". No luck! On the morning of Christmas Eve, I un-plugged the secondary coolant pump and was thinking that the pump was coming on during some point while it's parked and draining the battery. I drove it to work that way, and left the battery + lead connected during the day. To my surprise, I still has good voltage on the analog volt-meter! The car started right up and I was pretty happy that this was possibly cured. I left everything connected and on Christmas morning, still good indicated voltage. The wife and I left for Christmas breakfast with her family in her A6 and returned home at or about 1530 hrs. A quick look through the window while walking past the S-car, still good voltage! Could it be? Could this be fixed? Around 1700 hrs we had no plans for Christmas di nner and ordered sushi. I left and
 took her A6 and I still had good voltage when I left to pick up dinner, I returned about 15 minutes later, grabbed the food, walked past my S-car and saw the voltmeter bouncing off the 10 volt range. Son-of-a-B@%^H!!!!!! I ran into the house and grabbed my keys, unlocked the door and the battery was too weak to power the pump to unlock all of them. I have the power lock pump out of it's little hole while trouble shooting this and while the voltmeter was pinging off the 10 VDC range, I started un-plugging things. I first unplugged the vacuum pump to see if the fluctuations would stop and the battery would stabilize, no joy. I then started to pull the fuse cover off the left side of the dash and pulled one fuse. It didn't change anything. I then realized that I had a wife and dinner waiting inside for me, in order to continue with this, I needed to get some tools out, and I said "to hell with it" and took the + le ad off the battery. I will prob get another new battery this week bec
ause this current new battery has been deep cycled so many times, I'd rather just start fresh with another fresh one. I wish I had the tools and my DMM just laying in the car, ready to see what the actual draw was on the battery. My wife saw that I was visibly upset that this pain in the ass car is driving me crazy. The lack of time to trouble shoot this is getting the best of me right now too. On the plus side, I have a bag-o-relays coming from a lister who answered my calling for some "known good" relays and is parting an S6. They will prob be here this week as well. I have a new turbocharger coolant temp sensor coming as well. I'm not ruling out that the aux water pump is running. Even though the pump was unplugged from the aux water pump, the relay might be doing this to the battery. Again with the "ifs"...if I had my DMM out, I could have seen if there was power at the disconnected plug for the aux water pump. That would have drove me to that system (electrically) Today (time 
permitting) I will remove the  left and right footwell covers and expose the relay panels down there. The aux water pump relays and rad fan relays are down on the  right side, the power window stuff is on the left.

The car will be able to sit for the upcoming New Years holiday. My wife and I are going to Baltimore to my cousin's home for a New Years Eve bash he and his wife throw every year. If I'm able to do anything significant to the S-pig, that will be a good static test for it. (or maybe someone with set it on fire for me!)

Once I get this pig fixed, what do these cars go for on trade in at the dealer?  :)

So to sum up this episode "Did It Fix It?!" the answer is hell NO! I have a growing list of what is not draining my battery!

Stay tuned for the next episode titled "One Step Forward...Three Steps Back"

Jim