[V8] Battery draining possibilities?

[Karl Middlebrooks]

V8 #1, which started eating batteries (went through 3 or 4 in the course of a month) in December finally got towed to the shop yesterday with what I thought would be problem(s) with the alternator, voltage regulator, or charging system.

The folks at the shop got the car up and running after blowing carbon gunk out of the valves to get compression on the cylinders again (proof that the V8 hates just sitting around with nothing to do for a couple of months), recharged the battery and found no problems with the alternator, the voltage regulator, or the charging system. Amperage was great, and with the car off, it's pulling less than 1/10th of an amp, according to the mechanic. They weren't able to find a short or anything else that might explain the original problem.

Anyone have any ideas what might be going on here? When the car started eating batteries, it would work fine one day and then less than 24 hours later, the battery would be dead enough that sometimes the central locking system wouldn't even work. A jump start would get it running again, and then one day, it wouldn't jump any more. I'm absolutely vigilant about turning off lights, stereo, and other doodads that could draw power when I get out of the car (e.g. car phone charger).

I'd like to have the car in good working condition. It's been pretty well taken care of, and I hoped to get it up to at least 300,000 miles before thinking about doing something drastic with it, but if I can't figure out why it might have been acting up, I'd have to look at parting it out.