I looked through the posts - found the battery drain cheat sheet, thanks! - and have traced my excess current draw to fuse 15, which seems to supply every lamp in the car. Rather than rip the car's harness apart inch by inch, I'm hoping someone might have a suggestion (other than lamps left on, already checked) about what might be good places to start. One additional fact: it may have begun during or following being parked outside during three + days of more or less heavy rain.

ETA: 850, 1997 base sedan.

Thanks for any ideas!

 

The glovebox light is always my go to place when looking for a drain. The door eventually doesn't close enough to depress the switch enough to keep the light off. I removed the bulb and let it removed.

 

Thanks for that! I did check the switch, and it works, but I'll pop the bulb out and see where that gets me.

 

How fast does it go dead. Next day, couple days ??
You could also replace the glove box and trunk lights with LED bulbs. If it stayed on it wouldn't matter for quite some time.

 

Thanks for the q. It takes a couple days, and may be faster in the rain. The glove box bulb makes no difference. Right now, I've just pulled fuse 15; except for darkness, it seems to have no effect on the way the car runs. I left it on a trickle charger for a day or so, and now am allowing it to sit.

Another bit of Trivia? Don't know yet. The aftermarket alarm also refused to respond to the key fob in the rain the other day, so I dove in to replace the 210/211 relay with a brand new bypass 210 device, only to find the aftermarket guys had already done so. While lying on my back looking around (and TBH, swearing), I found a relay taped onto the wiring harness, with a fifteen amp fuse taped to it. Since the alarm was a problem even before it didn't respond, I took a chance and removed the fuse. So far, it seems to have killed the alarm (Thank heavens!) and has had no bad effects on the car's operation.

So my plan, subject to any ideas from this thread, is to wait a while and see if the battery drain is as bad as it was, then reinstall fuse 15 and wait a couple more days and see again. I'm kinda hoping it's the alarm that's the problem, but we'll see.
Of course, any other thoughts will be welcome.

 

I have the same problem with the aftermarket remote start/alarm/remote lock system. When I disable the remote start then no more battery drain.

Just recently I found a page in the owners manual that states not to cut up the factory harness for aftermarket alarms.

Apparently there is a plug near the passenger footwell specifically for aftermarket units. I haven't had a chance to look for it yet but it might be worth a shot.

 

Since I removed the fuse taped to the wring harness, I've had no battery drain problems. Just finished a 2200 mile trip visiting relatives post-Christmas, which I would have been very leery of trying before.

I never had a remote starter on the car, so my issue is (apparently) due to the alarm only. The central locking seems to operate: I can open all doors with two turns of the key in either front door lock, and lock all doors with one operation of the key in either front door lock. (The operations include the trunk and gass fillier cap door.) The unlock switch on the dash works as well.

The only thing that appears different is that all the doors don't unlock when the car's put into Park, which used to happen.

I've spent no time looking for the plug you mention (and it's too cold now ha-ha), so I can't yet say if the insteller cut the factory harness or just taped his stuff to it to get it out of the way. I'll check that in the spring.

 

Sounds like a bad relay or a bad alarm unit. I'm thinking that the aftermarket alarms are the problem.

I'm not going to look for the plug until spring. We've just had 45 cm of snow in the last 24 hrs!