I have an electrical drain that discharges the battery after 3 to 4 days. So far I disconnected my positive battery cable and placed the positive lead on my multimeter to the battery and the negative lead to the positive cable, ( I think this is the way I was told to perform this test). Anyways I observed an approximately 52 miliamp draw. I pulled each fuse one by one and kept the hood and door closed so I would not have a false reading. Still there was a constant draw. I disconnected the alternator wire just to be sure but no luck. Where do I look from here??? I am completely lost and getting frustrated because I have to keep the car on a battery charger 24/7.

I'm hoping that I posted this in the right section because I have posted this in general tech almost 1 year ago and maybe got two responses.

Thanks for any and all suggestions.

 

Check the fuel pump - wait til it's late at night, very quiet, open trunk, and place ear on hump and see if you can hear the whining of the fuel pump. A fuel pump running 24/7 will drain the battery in about 3 or 4 days.

If you hear the pump with the key in your pocket, then you have a bad oil pressure sending unit. A direct connection occurs between the battery and the fuel pump via the OPSU - sometimes the OPSU can go bad in such a way that it 'thinks' it's sensing oil pressure when there is none, and it'll run the fuel pump constantly - since there's no interruption between it and the battery, doesn't matter if the key is in the car or not. This happened to me once, took forever to figure it out!

 

Thanks camaronewbie, I did put my ear to the gas tank hump and did not hear the wine of the fuel pump. is it possible the opsu turns on intermittently and I'm not listening at the right time? I pulled the battery, and starter out today and will be bringing it to autozone for testing. I had them check the alternator the other day and it was good. Interesting thing happened though, I figured since I had the starter out it was a good time to pull the passenger side plugs since im going to be replacing them and adding new wires. All of them were a pain in the *** and when I went to pull #4 plug it was really wrenched on. I persisted though and eventually freed it from the block. That's when I noticed that the plug appears to be a factory AC plug with an extreme amount of rust on it. I think my starter might also be factory since my IROC only has 85000 on it and it was well taken care of. I will be posting pics of these two items to see what people think, I just couldnt find my camera tonight.

 

Fuel pump should either run, or not. So it wasn't a good guess, but I tried! Good luck with finding the source! And if I think of anything else, I'll chime in again.

 

 

Thanks anyway camaronewbie, that is still good information and something I would have never thought of. Anyways I took the starter into autozone today and it tested good, the guy at the counter thought it came out of a truck because of it's size. It was a pain to wriggle out from between the exhaust pipe and engine block.

Nina, excellent information about the fusible links. I have an 89 with a 5.7. Do you know how many links there should be, what they look like and where I can find them.