So i have a problem with my battery dying overnight. I will come out in the morning and the battery will be drained.

I thought it was a bad battery but when i unplug the positive terminal side the battery will stay charged overnight. No lights are on in my car and i cannot figure out what would cause this. Could it be improper grounding or is something still "on" that i need to trace down? :confused:

Something is shorting to ground (not a hard short, but a gradual one - essentially "leaking" current... you need to get a multimeter and use that to measure the parasitic current (which should be under 50mA or so), then keep pulling fuses until you find the problem circuit, then chase the circuit and see what's broken.

If you have done any electrical work in the past, check all of the connections there, make sure nothing has broken and shorted to the chassis or anything like that.

hi . . nice post .
:confused:


I had this problem on my Saab 900, the relay from my hella lights was shorting slightly, would kill the battery overnight but not after a day at work. it was really frustrating for a while, replaced the relay, no more problems.

so if a positive wire conducting current from the battery is touching the chasis it will drain the battery?

yes - a direct short like that will usually just blow a fuse, though.

Your problem is something is loading the battery when everything is supposed to be off. To find out what area has the load on it you can use a test probe light in series with the negative battery lead to the battery. A current meter is best though. The load will cause current to flow through the test light and will turn it on. By pulling fuses one at a time you can see when the correct fuse is pulled when you see the light dim or go out. There shouldn't be more than 80 milliamps of draw under normal conditions.