RE: "Battery Meltdown" or "Poltergeist"

[steveb@falcon.kla-tencor.com (Steven Buchholz)]

>      Here's a nutty one for ya.  I go out to the parking garage in Boston
> last night and discover that my doors are unlocked.  After confirming that
> nothing is missing I seem to remember that I definately locked the car in
> the morning....so I attempted to lock the car with the key from the
> passenger side door of my 90-90Q20v.  All the locks go down and I hear the
> trunk click as well.  I pull the key and the locks come back up.  I do it
> again and the the car unlocks itself again.  I go to the driver's door and
> the car does not unlock..but I can see that the lock buttons rise just a
> little bit,  This is a little disturbing but not worth losing any sleep
> over.

I've seen similar behavior when the driver's door isn't latched all the 
way.  Since you say that you could lock successfully from the driver's 
door lock it may be that the switch for the power locks is slightly out 
of adjustment.

On your electrical system problem ... perhaps there was some sort of high 
resistance situation in the batt.  It might not be bad to get the old 
battery load tested ... if it passes that test, then you may not have 
fixed the problem by changing the battery.  I had a weird intermittent 
on the '88 5kCSQW that turned out to be the ground cable came loose 
where it attaches to the frame ...

HTH!
Steve Buchholz
San Jose, CA (USA)