Meanwhile back inside the doors

While waiting for my new keyless entry and power lock kit, I decided to do some adjustment in the doors. Thanks to the relays, the power windows work great, but the windows needed to be adjusted. I didn't spend a lot of time on the upper and lower window stops the first time I was in the doors and now was a good time to get it right.



First off was replacing the lower stops. The factory stop was a rubber bumper on the bottom. Both sides were completely shot which allowed the window to crash down on the inner door frame -- not good. I found some rubber door stops at Home Depot and they work great. I also adjusted the upper stop too so no more needing to be super careful in raising and lowering the windows.

Found my power drain

After lots of head scratching and poking and prodding, I think I finally figured out the source of my electrical drain. The problem ended up being the "black box" shown below. This device is a timer is it controls a little fan in the engine compartment. It's supposed to work like this -- when the engine is shut off, this timer kicks on the fan which draws gas fumes from the air cleaner into the charcoal canister. Basically, it's part of the emissions control system. Well, all this stuff was removed from my car long ago. I have no fan or canister -- only the timer relay. When I disconnected it, my electrical draw dropped by over 100mA. Since it's not controlling anything anymore, it's safe to just leave it unplugged.



For those of you needing to find an electrical drain, the process goes like this. First, you need a digital multimeter capable of measuring current. Disconnect the negative side of the battery and use the leads of the meter to connect the negative cable to the battery. Set the meter to measure current and you should see your precious electronics flowing from the battery and disappearing in the ether. Then, go the fusebox and start pulling fuses. Hopefully, one of the fuses you pull will result in a drop on the meter. That(those) fused circuit(s) is(are) the source of the drain. Hopefully you have a readable wiring diagram and can track down the problem. For us 308 owners, Paul Bennett at http://www.ferrariwiring.com/ has GREAT color diagrams. I highly recommend them. Best part is they're extremely affordable.



At the end of the day, here is where I'm at -- about 17.5mA. 16mA is the analog clock and 1.5mA is the memory on the stereo. I also had about 10mA on my keyless entry system, but it basically died so I'm replacing it. Hopefully the new one will have a low current draw. If it's under 8mA I will be close to my 25mA target.



To get to to wiring, I ended up removing a lot of the dash. In fact, the entire dash (again). This meant the steering wheel, hub, switch stalk and instrument cluster. Before reassembly, I did one quick thing to the cluster which was to jumper the instrument light rheostat. This is an old-school dimmer for the gauge lights. I doesn't work well and bypassing it is an easy way to increase the brightness of the lights.

I didn't put everything back together yet. A new keyless entry system is on the way so the door panels are still off. As soon as it arrives, I can put the car back together and drive!

Help, my electrons are leaking out

Up until this week, we've had quite a run of good weather. I've had the 308 out a few times in the last month and it's been a blast. A couple weeks ago, it was Ferrari day at E@RTC. This was a big event, especially since it was at the RTC center court. The weather was beautiful and we had a tremendous turnout. I heard there were 70 Ferraris there, including an Enzo, a 599 GTO and a 250 GTO racer.



I went to start the car last week and the battery was dead -- again. The battery is less than 2 years old and this was not the first time it's been dead after sitting. I finally pulled it out and had Napa run a load test on it. Prognosis? Deader than a doornail and in need of a replacement. Fortunately, it was still under warranty and it cost me about $20 for a new battery.



When I got home, I decided to run a few tests before hooking everything back up. I hooked up my multimeter inline on the negative terminal of the battery and pulled out all the fuses in the fusepanels. Sure enough, there was a 140ma drain in the system when it should have been near zero. Even with all the fuses hooked up, the only things drawing power with the ignition off should be the clock and the stereo memory. It should be 10-15ma at most. The combination of a dying alternator and a parasitic electrical drain was enough to kill the battery. Since I'm working on sorting out electrical stuff, now's a good time to figure out why my keyless entry stopped working as well. However, before I could do more tests, my multimeter died(!). I guess I'll have to wait to do more troubleshooting.