Gerald Miller wrote:

On Tue, 15 Feb 2011 21:42:45 -0500, "Michael A. Terrell"
wrote:



My first car (61 Ford Galaxy) had an odd electrical problem that
would kill the battery, and several mechanics gave up on finding the
cause. My first clue was that you could listen to the radio by turning
on the parking lights, and turning on the left turn signal. The tail
light had a dead short between the two filament terminals. It took me
longer to replace the lamp and lens than it did to find the trouble. My
uncle was upset, because he sold the car for $100, since no one could
fix it.
Senior son had a 68 firebird that had to be driven every day to keep
the battery charged. After several rescue calls, I traced the problem
to a rusted out horn relay.


The battery in my 66 GTO would be dead if it sat more than a few
days. That turned out to be a bad battery cable. The insulation had
turned to carbon, and was draining the battery. It ran trough a metal
tube to keep it away from the engine, so the damage wasn't visible until
it was removed from the car. The new cables were made from #1 welding
cable, and the electrical system had about 5 microamps leakage after the
repairs.


--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a band-aid on it, because it's
Teflon coated.