Yeah, you are a dope. It would take 6+ hours of a road trip to charge up the battery with the stock voltage regulator. This has something to do with me selling over 500 adjustable VRs around the world.

Don't dare try and measure the current draw with a handyman multumeter until you figure out what it can do.. They can probably read 10 amps or 20 if you get a good one. Your problem is 100's of amps. You need an industrial meter and shunt for that as the home jobs will blow a fuse if they are high enough quality. If the meter is a cheap job and doesn't have a fuse, you will notice the smoke and fire in your hand.

 

I think if he is losing that kind of current then he will surely notice the major sparks just by removing the cables. My car has a 280 mA draw with everything turned off. I've traced it to 'one' of the cables off of the positive terminal. My next step is tracing this cable back to the source.

 

ok so i think we've concluded that the battery was not charged enough from the ride...meaning that that isn't a problem. so i think i have a smaller drain somewhere. so the putting the meter on the battery trick sounds pretty good... i'll try that, and i'll charge the battery at autozone

 

In my experience, three weeks of sitting in the cold is enough to drain my battery to the point where the car won't quite start, but all of the accessories will work. It's usually OK at two weeks. I have the original starter, alternator, VR and cables (still looking for time to install my iceshark kit), all of which is going into the trash this spring and being replaced w/ new/rebuilt. I seldom drive the car for less than an hour at highway speed when I take it out, so the couple of times that I've jumped it, I had no problem restarting it when I next needed to. I have no unusual drains (e.g., no alarm, stock stereo) and my wrench has tested the electrical system and pronounced my battery good and alternator OK, so I believe that the above is pretty standard 18 year old 951 fare.