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!