I need to do this on 2 of my vehicles; my '87 Westy and my '98 Jetta both have enough draw to kill the battery after a short while sitting. Another way to check this without a multimeter is to pull the batt lead and touch it to see if there's a spark when you reconnect it. The dome light or radio may cause a tiny spark, but a bigger spark is cause for concern. As you said, pulling fuses will help locate which circuit(s) have excessive draw. Do all your sparking away from the batt top to prevent your batt from blowing up, like at the fuses or at the neg batt strap connection. I'm curious as to why you would hide fuses all over your bus? There's really only 2 places where a fuse is appropriate; the battery and the fuse block. Both are the beginning of a circuit. Placing a fuse anywhere downstream will not protect the portion of the circuit that's upstream of it. The whole idea of fuses is to protect the entire positive side of the circuit from accidental shorting to chassis ground, which could cause a fire. Too large of a fuse will not blow when appropriate, too small of a fuse will blow in normal uses. I see no point in adding fuses downstream all over a vehicle. Mike B. On 7/24/2013 1:42 AM, neil n wrote: re: parasitic draw. Set your VOM to measure Amps, then connect it in series with battery. Pull/replace each fuse one by one. See which one affects current draw shown on meter. Neil. Who has hidden non OEM fuses ALL over his bus. ;) |
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