I was wondering - what's the best way of locating a short in a car?
Here's the background - after putting the battery back in the 'maro for TÃœV inspection, I noticed it would run it down pretty quickly - before, removing the fuse for the alarm system would keep the battery fine, otherwise the alarm would run down the battery after about 5 weeks or so to the point where the car would hardly start anymore.
When I was working on the car, I put the charger on and noticed that it blew the fuse of the charger (20A fuse! I hadn't removed the cables from the battery). So I removed the cables, charged the battery.
For the trip down to Geiselwind, I had charged the battery again the day before, dropped it in for the trip, but didn't disconnect it down there. After just 4 1/2 hours, it was completely run down, started once, but pretty much dead an hour later. Wisely, I had put a jumper cable in the trunk
Anyway, after almost two hours trip home, I pulled the car into the workshop, turned if off, it didn't even have enough power in the battery for a single restart. WTF? Something is sucking literally every milliamp out of the battery and alternator (alternator/voltage reading during motor running is around 13-14V mark ...)
I was planning on pulling all the fuses on the car (driver side door, and I think there's another fuse fox in the motor area, right?), then measure each one's throughput and see how much is going through it. That should reduce the possibilities quite a bit ... anyway, I've not found anything that's not working, I would imagine a short drawing that many amps should have some side effects apart from draining the battery!?