I have a 89 RS camaro i picked up a while back...it never had any battery draining problems. now within 48 hours of a full charge the battery is deader than a doornail. i tried new battery...didnt help. unhooked cd player. no dome lights are hooked up either. anything i can look for??

 

soooooooo,the new battery drained the moment you hooked it up??

 

i have similar problem but I found what was, first thing you do is right now unplug neg battery and put a multimeter between the negative cable and your battery and set it up to AMPS, like for me it shows 0.17 so im losing about 170 milliamps, bout 2-3 days and batt dead.
so once you have some number, start pulling out fuses 1 by 1 and check till you have 0, so nothing draining (clock on radio takes a bit, very negligible) then put fuse back and check and take off just to be sure.
I would guess it is most likely CTSY fuse (horn, radio,compartment/interior lights) and if not then tail lights or stop/haz (which I have).
follow the wires of that fuse, most likely if its one of those it will go through the steering column, so if it is, unplug steering column to make sure its there/not there.
possible other areas: cigg lighter has a penny or frayed wire...

 

yea...i'll have to give that a shot..and no it didnt drain right away...took about 1-2 days to drain it to. i also had unplugged the noisy buzzer under the dash thinking that was it, but it wasnt. it seems like since i changed the drivers side door i started gettin problems. i'll see what happens

 

Do you have any power accessories in the door? Lock, window, mirror? Check for a pinched wire either inside the door or in the rubber hose thingy between the door and the jamb. The other thing to check would be the courtesy switch in the jamb. It may be stuck in the "open" position and even if the lights aren't on, it is still grounding the circuit out.

 

well its a all power door and nothing is hooked up yet. i thought maybe the courtesy switch might of been the issue, so i took it out and twisted the wires together...then tried having them apart...i wasnt sure how that switch works...but i tried both ways. i have the battery charging right now, and i took about 5 fuses out..so i'll see if this makes any changes.

 

thats probably your problem. The courtesy switch I'm guessing you mean the switch that turns the int. lights off when the door is closed?
If so,thats a def. nono!
By the way,does this car run?

 

The door switches work by providing a ground for the dome/courtesy light circuit when the doors are opened. When the doors are closed, the switches open up, breaking the ground and turning off the lights.

I would start with removing all the fuses for non-essential stuff. If you don't get a drain, then start putting them back one by one. Takes forever that way, but is the easiest.

 

or untwisting the wires that he twisted together from that switch.
That sounds like a definate battery drain problem to me.

 

the car runs great...so should the 2 wires be together or not together? i tried both ways and didnt make a difference

 

It doesn't matter if the wires are twisted together or not if they are the two from the back of the driver's side door jamb switch. They both are + wires that ground out through the switch when the door is open. One should be used to provide a ground for the dome/courtesy lights, and the second would provide a ground for the annoying buzzer in the convenience center. If untwisting them stops the drain, then you have a short in the convenience center. If not, then you need to look elsewhere for the problem.

 

first i suggest finding what circuit the drain is, use an ammeter or multimeter and start popping off fuses, its better than guessing the doors (from your post i think you dont know where it is yet). Once you find out then you can start getting into more details, i just find it easier to start at a general place and slowly get more specific.

 

check your rear hatch motor see if its going whhhhr whhhhr. If it isnt all the way down it will drain batt trying to move down.

 

i know at work on the freightliner trucks sometimes we cannot find the battery drain and the internal field windings on the alternator can sometimes short out and cause the battery to drain slowly, check with the multimeter as stated above and unhook your alternator cables.

 

what the heck was that last post? he must be on the wrong website? lol anyway i unplugged about all my fuses and the big "breaker" i guess you call it that runs the power windows. I have had a small battery tender on the battery the last couple days and before it would never show green meaning battery being fully charged....and now since i unplugged some fuses, it finally turned green and stays green. so now i just have to start pluggin in fuse by fuse till i find the one causin the problem.

 

That last post seems like someone's ad-bot to me... Usually when you plug in a fuse that has a current drain on the circuit, you'll notice a small 'arc' or electricity... This can vary from a SHARP blue snap, to a small sparky twizzle on the blades of the fuse. Sometimes I have had to do this to find wiring issues on a vehicle... Whichever fuse it is, will generally lead you to the area of the car to look around. Once, I had a DEAD SHORT in a fuel heater on a 1994 Cehvy 2500 6.5 Diesel, and the ONLY WAY TO FIND THE SHORT WAS TO BURN IT OUT!!! I had to connect the main out wire from the glowplug solenoid directly to the battery. Sounds like I was stupid, but after 5 hours of digging, and praying and crying, I had enough. I was gonna either burn the truck, or fix it...

Hope this helps man!
Scott AKA YL

 

found it! turns out it was something in the rear hatch. the rear hatch motor dont work right now and hasnt since i got the car. i think i tried hooking it up a while back to get it to work...apparently it dont. so its unhooked and appears its going to stay charged now! thanks everyone

 

haha!Not poking fun at you in any kind of way but I've never heard the phrase
(a small sparky twizzle) before!Well said my friend!
teamstream,glad to hear you got it figured out!Hope your scalp isn't bleeding from all that head scratching.

 

you are only halfway there my friend, now you gotta try to get it to work and not drain, that is probably the harder half to do now :P

 

naa..im just gonna leave the fuse out. the rear hatch motor dont work anyway. i got it set up to where i just slam the rear hatch motor down for now and its tight. so its all good.