Sorry for the long title.

I recently installed a battery in the trunk and routed the positive lead up along the central tunnel and to the starter. Car starts fine, runs fine, yadda yadda.

I put the car back in the garage and checked on it after about a week. Battery is dead. I charged it for a few hours (with the negative terminal attached) but was not willing to let it charge while I was out of the house and shut the charger off after checking the batt. voltage (around low 12V)

Came back and found the battery had drained back to dead. Pulled the neg lead and charged for more hours. Again shut the charger off and battery stayed charged this time.

Was not sure what was draining the battery, but checked my dark current by placing a multimeter between the neg lead and neg post. (this does not catch ALL possible parasitic drain as per HERE.)

I found a huge 3A current drain and figured that some how hooking to the starter was putting a constant current through the car. But then i figured out my door was open. This was a very complicated deductive process (who knew the door open leads to a 2A current?)

I shut the door and found a 0.6A drain. I then physically pulled the trunk light out and found a 0.3A drain.

This seems high but within what is often reported with dark current. Could this be what drained my bat?

Some of the questions still remain. Based on the wiring, there should be no reason why I cant charge the battery with the pos lead on the starter. Is this a reasonable place to attach the lead? If this connection DOES prevent my charging the battery, it might have explained my issue.

Also, 300mA is a considerable draw for nothing actually being on. I suppose I could go start pulling fuses. But my bigger issue is conclusively determining if routing the pos lead from the battery to the starter is a GO or a NO GO.

 

a very smart guy once told me anything more than about 0.5A draw is wrong.

 

yep. 50 mA should be the most draw. Start pulling fuses.