retter1126

[QUOTE=JWise]Thanks Bill, Alan, Doc, all, for what has turned into a GREAT electrical draw diagnosis thread. Ryan, you may want to edit your thread title to reflect this.

Thanks Jarrod, good idea. I've checked through the options and don't see any way to revise the title?

JWise

Ryan,

Someone else will have to chime in on that, as I don't know either. I'm pretty certain you can. If not, perhaps Randy can do it for you.

docmirror

Edit your first original post, and you will be able to modify the title line. Take your time on the electrical diagnosis, it's something you're not familiar with and it's best to go slow with new stuf(as you found out).

Doc

ew928

Ryan,
If you haven't checked, see if BOTH side marker lights (ones behind the rear wheels) are one when the parking lights are on. Those are also on the damned tail-light check circuit.

Have you tried pulling the fuse to disable the radio? Unless you're going for long drives it shouldn't be too bad listening to the V8 for short rides.
Takes the radio/amp out of the car's circuit.

The 2 sidepanels on both sides of the center console comes out pretty easily after removing 2 or 3 machine screws. That way you can access all the wiring in the center console if there's something not quite right there. (you mentioned the ashtray)

Ernest (NYC)
On constant solar charger.

retter1126

Thanks Ernest, I'm addiding your suggestions to the list. Out of frustration I unhooked the battery last night and left it. I'll be sure to check the marker lights when I get around to looking at it again. For now I have three deadlines to deal with.

As for the side panels, great tip! I need a nice sunny and WARM day to poke around in there to see what there is to see.

Alan

Ernest - there is no fuse for the radio - at least - only the one on the back of the radio itself... There is a fuse for the Amplifier ("booster") - but thats thats all it controls.

Alan

ew928

Thanks for the correction, Alan.
My mistake.
Think on my 88 the radio always gets power. Not sure if it's a timed relay but I can unlock the door and power up the radio without having to key up the accesories position on the ignition.
But the radio has been swapped out for a Sony by PO when I got it so unsure of factory setup.
I know my radio and external amp contributes to current draw.

Ernest (NYC)

IcemanG17

Retter
Congrats on the very nice GTS & welcome to the shark asylum.....you have already found the "holy grail" of 928 ownership in this forum!!

mpesik

Nice.
I think the 928-gts is one of the most beautiful cars ever made.

retter1126

OK everyone, one last bit of evidence concerning the wiring/draw issue. I rounded up this old photo of the car showing what looks like a phone and I'm not sure what the big box thing is. I have a freind who runs a shop helping me this coming Thursday with the electrical. I'll be armed with several of your posts and hopefully we'll find the problem as my father inlaw will be visiting that weekend and I'd like to firmly establish for him that Cadillac is not the feat of engineering he thinks it is.

JPTL

Didn't you say that the problems started when you moved the wires to the cig. lighter circuit? If your fuse is blown on the cig. lighter circuit, I'm thinking that maybe there was an old jumper wire for that phone that got clipped when the phone was pulled. Maybe it wasn't properly taped, and it's grounding when the wires are jostled.
If your fuse isn't blown, I would go straight to the fuseblock and look for a jumper at one of the fuse bases. If there's one there, you should be able to immediately spot it, by seeing either an odd looking wire coming from one of the fuses, or a something that looks like a spade connector coming out of the hot side of a fuse base.
When cellphone companies installed car units in the 90's they would either tap into a hot line with a wiretap, or go to the fuse block and stick a jumper into a battery (constant-on) or an accessory-on circuit (the lighter circuit on our cars). Where they went depended on the phone.
The fuseblock method was faster, because they could look at the fuse diagram and immediately determine which circuits were the constant-on or acc.-on circuits. They used universal jumpers, and connected them up to an appropriate high amp circuit, like the lighter circuit.
The fuse blocks in our cars don't take universal jumpers very well, and I wouldn't be surprised if there's an old jumper (maybe on your lighter circuit) that is loosened over time, and is creating a loose connection at the fuse base.
Even if you don't see anything, check the integrity of the fuse at the lighter circuit to see if it's loose. A loose fuse base would cause a dead circuit, but the fuse might still be fine.
By the way, the black thing looks like the leather manual/document folder.

docmirror

I don't pretend to know what it is. I would have someone knowledgable with car electrics locate all the wires coming out of that black thing, follow them back to the source, and excise them from the car in total. Check that the power for that thing has been restored to original condition.

Following that, please do the current draw test in my prev post. Let us know what you discover, and we can work forward from there.

SharkSkin

Bill & I helped a GTS owner track down a current drain today -- luckily all issues were with circuits that go through the CE panel. It took us just an hour or so working at a casual pace to identify three circuits that were causing the current drain on the car. This stuff really isn't that hard if you have the wiring diagrams and a short primer on reading them -- they are a strange mix of English, German, a bit of Greek and a few things here and there that must have come from Alpha Centauri or parts more distant -- but all in all the diagrams are very accurate. Just follow the steps mentioned and you should be able to make a huge dent in the problem.

retter1126

By the way Randy, love those wheels!!!!!!!
Ryan

retter1126

OK, back to this thread to see if anyone is still listening.

Reminder, 93 GTS with dead cig lighter and power drain.

The car spent the last two days in the shop. The cig lighter is now working, however the drain has not been located. They tested all fuses and relays which were good and affected nothing. They did notice that the drain on their meter conincided with each flash of the security sys light. I'm told that that's why I need the trickle charger, however I'm wondering how I'd ever take the car on a trip as the battery would be dead in five days?

I now have a call into Bob Hindson Racing in K.C. for some advice. For now I can keep it on the charger and enjoy it. However, I'd love to go to some of the 928 events and as it sits that's not really an option.

Thoughts?

Ryan