2009 Journey: with the fuse box empty, what is drawing power??

[leaning]

2009 Dodge Journey. Something keeps draining my battery. So, I have to jack the car up, remove the battery, take it to Advance, they charge it, back in the car, and repeat.

I had some time this weekend, so I tried to do a current test. Battery is connected down below, but the negative is disconnected at the bulkhead and I was doing amps there.

So with ALL of the fuses, relays, and the CB removed from the fuse box (it's empty now), there is a huge spark whenever I try to put that cable back on the bulkhead. What else can I check? What draws power with the fuse box empty??

[John/Horace]

Alternator if the internal diodes are bad. Multimeter will show it. Big lead from alt has a built in fusible link and runs to positive terminal of battery. Isolate alternator. 

[leaning]

Well, I used multimeter on diode scale. Black lead to positive battery terminal, red lead to case of alternator. 430mv, which looked OK. Removed the small and big wires from the alternator. So, fuse box empty and alternator disconnected. Put the black cable on at the bulkhead.  Smaller sparks, but still sparking. I had it attached but not bolted and heard a fan running. Went inside the car to see if anything was on that needed turned off (no key in the ignition), but a fan was running. Then brown smoke started coming out from the engine compartment. I got out of the car and saw the smoke was coming from below the fuse box. I pulled off the black cable, the smoke stopped, the fan stopped, but a lot of burnt electrical smell. 

 

So, I removed the spare and the jack, cleaned out my stuff from the inside of the car, removed the battery, am draining and removing the radiator, and am scrapping this thing. it worked well when it worked, but between this and all the other issues, time to call a spade a spade.

 

Thanks everyone for your troubleshooting help!