Saab Electrical Question

[CCI]

I know, that's like saying "1972 Triumph 650 electrical question."

In this case, it's a 2004 Saab 9-3 that is draining a new good quality battery over the course of a couple of days. The draw is outside the range of my meters (I needed to buy a new meter anyway) but it's more than 200 mA. It's enough such that after a couple of days you can start the car and then shut it off and not get the key back out. Normal for a Saab with a low battery, of you connect a booster pack the key comes out fine.

New battery, terminals cleaned, cables good.

I will go through the drill of pulling fuses, isolating circuits, and I understand that the retained accessory power makes this a slow tedious process.

With the tremendous wealth of knowledge and experience here I thought maybe someone might have an obvious or easy answer.

Thanks, all!

 

[ecotourist]

My BMW was doing something similar (draining a fairly new battery regularly over days and occasionally in a few hours).

The problem was the control for the AC fan motor. That is apparently a very common problem with BMWs. My BMW specialist mechanic was quite surprised that my almost 20 year old car still had the original part.

The only thing I noticed was that the fan was slow to start after a cold start, and even seemed to change speeds occasionally on its own initiative. In retrospect it had been doing "funny things" for years.

 

[Trav]

The glove box and trunk light on these is always suspect when there is a parasitic drain.

 

[meep]

Alternator diodes is another. A symptom of this could also be lamp flickering while running or increased level of electrical noise heard via radio, etc. over 200MA does sound like a lamp.