battery drain

[cyclops@mindlink.bc.ca (michael mulholland)]

if you're looking for a curreny drain with ignition off and don't have a
multimeter a good tool is a brakelight bulb on clipleads. simply disconnect
the battery terminal and clip one lead to the pos + terminal and the other
to the disconnected cable. depending on the extent of the drain the bulb
will glow from a dim red to a very bright white. then remove fuses one at a
time while monitoring the bulb brightness. when the light goes out you have
found the drain circuits.
btw i had to lend my 5ktq to my son yesterday. naturally anything that can
fail will fail while he is driving. i've proven this many times. but the
roads were icy and i'd rather keep him alive. around 10 that evening i get
the dreaded phone call "dad the check engine light is on and theres smoke
everywhere" just what i need! turns out it was the cooling warning and i
told him to look for obvious problems under the hood, there was coolant in
the trunk and DONT add coolant to the hot engine. two hours later he arrives
at home and smugly tells me that if i looked after my car the hose clamps
wouldn't come loose. (count slowly to ten and back here) anyhow he arrived
safely and the car still worked. inspection the next day revealed that the
upper rad hose fitting to the radiator, a crummy plastic thingie, had
broken. the broken end with the clamp retainer was still in the hose. so now
i'm left with a one inch stub with no raised portion to retain the clamped
hose. any body btdt? as a temporary fix i cut away the original clamped
section of the rad hose,about 1/2", used a new wider clamp and connected two
small steel wires under the clamp which i then wrapped around radiator parts
to help prevent the hose from being blown off as pressure builds. so far it
works , but am i stuck for a new rad because of a plastic nozzle? if the
darn thing were metel i'd just fabricate a part.
tia mike
865kcdtq
82lada1600 with momo
Cyclops Bicycles
Ph. (604) 545-5644 Fax (604) 545-1167
michael_mulholland@mindlink.bc.ca