I have an 88 Camaro IROC that I am having an electrical/battery drain issue with. If the car sits for a week without running, there is not enough juice in the battery to start the car, although the battery is not completely drained. However, I have used my multimeter to determine that the car is not drawing anymore than 30 mA at anytime while the car is off (I have checked it many times over the course of hours and it did not change). It is my understanding that such a draw should not kill a battery. The battery is a year old. I took the car to Advance Auto. They checked out the battery and electrical system and said all was ok except that my battery did not currently have the cranking amps it is rated for. They told me the only way to get it back up to that was to charge it with a trickle charger. Is this correct? If the battery was not brought back up to its capacity after completely dying at some point in the past, would this continually cause problems even after I have jumped the car and run it for a while?

 

You're not going to fully recharge a flat battery by just a jump start and driving around a bit. It needs to be charged overnight with a charger, preferably one that switches to trickle after the batt is charged. The act of cranking the motor discharges a batt at least 50-100 times faster than a charger or alt can recharge it.

 

Yes, a low amp charge is the way to try to revive your battery.

But I suspect your battery is toast. A 30mA draw should not kill a battery in a week.

 

I bought a battery charger at Sears last night. I will put it on the battery when I get a chance, charge it up, and see how it goes. I will let you know. Thanks for the help!