Battery drain issue

cudajim said

You really ought to pull one lead off your battery and put an ammeter in series with everything off. If it's pulling current start pulling fuses one at a time to find out where the draw is from. If that doesn't work, pull the wires off the alternator to check for a bad diode draw. It's got to be going somewhere! Your ammeter should show zero(0) amps unless you have an aftermarket radio which may pull microamps to save memory in which case you can ignore it.

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Yes, BUT........be careful. It is easy to screw up an ammeter because they are a SERIES device, so do this FIRST

Disconnect the battery ground, and put a large lamp bulb in series, such as a backup lamp or stop/ turn filament lamp. If it glows fairly bright, I would NOT hook up the ammeter and use the lamp instead

Make CERTAIN your multimeter is set up for the MAXIMUM current (amperage) measuring scale. If you are in doubt, post a photo of the meter, or at least the brand/ model.

With the multimeter set for maximum current, usually 10 or 20A, replace your test bulb with the meter. BE CAREFUL not to short one of the leads to something else

If you don't get a usable reading, carefully set the meter to lower scales until you get a useable reading