kaylin4u

After having gone through one good battery already, I just put on another high cranking amp battery, and found out that it is draining after being left off and unstarted for a week (noticed a drain after 3 days too). I do not have my radio installed at the moment.

So, this is what I did. I took a regular blinker bulb and hooked it between the battery and the negative post. At first the light lit up bright. This happened and I heard 3 clicks. One click from some box at the drivers side (I assume that is some kind of relay box for the power headlight motors), then the motors on both headlights made a clicking sound.

After that, the light went completely out. I have yet to go through each fuse in the fusebox while hooking up and amp meter between the negative post and cable, but I was wondering if these clicks and quick battery draw was normal for a 1991 Firebird?

Also, what is the normal draw this car should be pulling off on an amp meter?

kaylin4u

Okay, here's what I found. I set my Rat Shack Meter for AMPs and put it between the negative post on the battery and my negative cable. It was drawing about .067 AMPS (67 Milliamps). I started pulling fuses. When I got to ACC, it dropped down to .004 AMPS. WOW, what a difference! After digging around the site, I found that 20 Milliamps is about normal. I'm going to pull up some wiring diagrams on my car for ACC and start tracing.

kaylin4u

Okay, I dug around this site and found out that the ACC supplies power to the power door locks, MAP Lights, Interior Lights, Cigarette Lighter, Power Trunk Release and Power antenna. First of all, I do not have a power antenna, so I just started unplugging each one of these components and checked for amp draws. I moved the rubber garmet between the door jams where the power locks have wiring going through (just in case there was a short there), and nothing.

Then I drove my 383 firebird to church and left the ACC unplugged. I noticed my new GlowShift Gauges were at a fixed red color indicating that my constant memory wire was not getting power. When I ran the constant power off the back of the fuse panel, I undoubtly ran it off of ACC. When I unplugged one of the GlowShift Gauges, it dropped down to .033 AMPS. Then I unplugged the second gauge, and it dropped down to .001.

Never thought that the memory for these gauges would draw so much amperage from the car, so I tied both the memory and main power for these gauges to switched power. I really don't need these gauges to hold what color, because I like the default color anyway.

So, for now the drain is fixed. Just FYI, GlowShift Gauges are an inexpensive solution, and they work decently for the price. I strongly recommend that you do not use the backup memory (constant 12V), because it is definitely a power drain.