Hey everyone, hope someone can help with my issue. I have parasitic drain on my battery. I have traced it down to the radio and interior light. It's on the always positive blue with yellow tracer and silver stripes and the brown ground wire. I've tried bypassing the blue wire ok but the whole truck is + on the ground. Back story is that I hooked up a supposedly good amp. Connected everything hood still up. Turned the key and sparks flew from the negative battery post and the ground on the side inner fender. So I've done my test light test with negative terminal disconnected. I have 12v on my ground cable disconnected from battery. Any help would be great. I'm at my wit's end.​​​​​

 

Model-engine-transmission-trim or we assume its an Escalade.
How did you measure 12V on your ground? A picture paints a thousand words.

 

Voltage is ONLY measured between two points. So having "12v on my ground cable" is meaningless by itself.

I'm going to guess you disconnected the ground cable from the battery, and now you're trying to measure voltage from the (disconnected) ground cable to the negative battery post. Yes, you should get +12v that way. There's a continuous circuit from the positive post to the ground cable, if only through the memory power of the radio.

As to the rest of your description, the "amp" was obviously installed incorrectly. You'll reach a solution much more quickly by removing it (reversing your steps as best you can).

 

1989 dlx extra cab, 22r, 5 speed

 

1989, 22r, dlx extra cab, 5 speed

 

Check the cables you pulled for the amp, was it hard to pull, anything scraping?

what size wire did you run to the amp?

did you ground the amp to the body? Is it clean contact?

If bigger wire did you upgrade frame/body/engine grounds?

is the alternator wire connected properly?

Cheap fuse holder? Self tapping screw making contact with positive wire?

maybe that "brown" wire isnt a ground wire......

 

Yes measuring between disconnected terminal and post. My thoughts are you should not have voltage on a disconnected cable.

 

Tested continuity to verify power does not go to ground? I.e positive post to body

 

I hate this site. Can't figure out how to reply to individual post.

 

But it is connected. To the "body" ground. As is the radio. The radio always conducts a small amount of current (from the battery side to the ground side) just to keep the memory alive. Since your multimeter only draws microamps, that's enough of a connection back through the radio to the positive terminal of the battery, so you have ~12v from the body ground (through your cable) to the negative post of the battery.

Of course, if you really have a parasitic draw (your amp is certainly suspect), there is an even easier path. But your multimeter doesn't even need it: microamps.

You don't need to respond "to" individual posts (unless you're responding to one about 20 posts back, and why would you do that?) But if you want to "Quote" a post to which you are responding, maybe there's a button for that?

And since I omitted it the first time, welcome to YotaTech.