Thread: elctrical short
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Old 06-04-2003, 08:36 AM
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A bad ground won't cause a drain on the battery. I'll cause erratic or no function of it's associated equipment.

It's best to troubleshoot an electrical problem with an sensitive ampmeter. With the key switch off, remove all the fuses and test for current across the contacts. Unless you have a piece of equipment like a clock that is on a hot bus, you shouldn't have any drain. This way you can isolate the drain to a certain circuit. From there you can isolate it to a particular item.

You can also connect the ampmeter to the battery and remove fuses one at a time until the meter reads zero.

On an 86, you have a computer for the FI system. I think that draws a tiny amount of current to keep the volitile memory alive, but I'm not sure.
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