1994 240sx: Electrical

[lglusco]

I've been having a problem with my battery dying for the past month or so, but now out of dumb luck I think it may be solved at an expense of $1.25.

I've just recently started trying to educate myself about cars, specifically mine, because I like doing my own work when I can. Tremendous feeling of satisfaction when you succeed.

Anyway, I want to run by you what I think happened and see if it makes sense. Here goes:

Bought a new battery about a month or so ago. A week later it was dead. Wouldn't hold a charge for more than a week. Was thinking I might need an alternator.

One day while using battery charger to recharge my battery, I notice a strong smell of gas. I find a small piece of hose is leaking profusely. I got buy piece of hose for about $1.25, cut it to fit and put it in. I notice that some of the electrical tape around a bundle of wires directly below therehas become brittle and come loose, exposing a small section of the wires. I wipe everything clean, put on some new elect. tape.

A week later a put on the battery charger to check it. It's nearly fully charged and in 5 mins. I get the green light/fully charged.

So I'm wondering, perhaps before I had a profuse gas leak I had a small one making those wires damp and causing a ground/short??? that wasn't allowing the recharging of the battery.

I'm still new to trying to understand the workings of the automobile. Does my theory make sense?

[benemorius]

While I do believe gasoline is conductive (at least I think it is...), I wouldn't be so sure that's what was going on. At any rate, all you can really do is just wait and see what happens. If it starts acting up again, what you need to do is get an ammeter and connect it in series with the battery with the car off to determine whether the car is drawing more than it should.

[lglusco]

Thanks. Your post gave me a little more to go on, and I did some searches and did some reading about parasitic draw.

Will wait and see what happens. Couple other things I did recently that may have had an effect -- stereo ground wire had come loose (radio would cut off and then come right back on), so I pulled out stereo and got it securely grounded; and did the solder thing on the TCU to get the dash lights back on.

Are there any common culprits when it comes to excessive draw, or is it pretty random? (I hope I'm just asking this for academic reasons, but we'll see.)