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For some reason my new battery on my 38 Super Eight seems to go dead after a couple of weeks. I am told the battery is charging fine and there is no draw on the battery but something is wrong.

Any thoughts??

Thanks

Pierre

Disconnect the cables and see if it still goes dead. If so, it is definately a bad battery. If not, there must be a draw on the system.
HTH,
John

Did u have the same problem with the OLD battery???

Unless you have a defective battery, there has to be a current drain somewhere.

Not knowing if your car has one, a common place for a slow drain in later cars is the trunk light. If you have no trunk light, then any small light staying on will draw in the 2-300 mA range and can drain the battery over a week or two.

If the mechanic didn't check with a meter capable of reading down to milliamps, he would never see that small a drain with regular garage equipment. A suggestion would be to get a Volt-Ohm meter capable of reading 5-10 amps. Pull a battery cable and place the meter in series. Just be sure nothing is knowingly on when you connect because any large load (headlights, radio, etc) will damage the meter.

The little ball in the trunk light switch was stuck in the ON position and when ever I would forget to disconnect the battery, it would drain it in a few days. I removed the positive cable (hot) and watched closely as I reconnected it. It drew a small spark letting me know that something was drawing current. Because of hydrogen in that area, it is generally not a good practice. I won't tell you how long it took me to peek into the trunk

Quote:

Pierre,

to Packardinfo. Can't help with battery draining problem, but could you please include your '38 Super Eight in the Owner Registry together with a pic, and any known history?

Again,

I did have the same problem with the old battery. This one is new. If the key is left in the ignition that seems to have something to do with it maybe.

As long as in off position, just leaving the key in iqnition should have no effect unless something really strange is going on with your switch. I think you are going to have to monitor with a low reading instrument and disconnect a bit at a time until drain stops and then see what in that circuit is amiss. Any hidden lights or signs of corrosion across two adjacent terminals on something? Another remote possibility would be the brake light switch. If the switch had an internal leak, it may still work but there would be a high resistance current drain through the fluid since the voltage is present on one terminal all the time.

Another possibiity, though remote, if your car has the same setup as the 36 and back senior cars; the brake light is activated whenever the tranmission is put in park. So if you have the same transmission switch for the brake lights and you're parking with the trans in reverse and the battery connected, the battery will be dead within a few hours.

If your car is like the later cars and has a clock. The drain would be intermittent only causing a draw when the clock is being wound. Therefore, it would be easy to miss. If this happens to be correct it is naturally easy to fix. Just take out the clock fuse. Hope this helps.