hi my problem is simply my 87 tII has a battery discharge problem. i have searched and to no avail. if i leave the car overnight: dead battery. if you remove the battery lead and leave it, it dosen't lose any juice, so i think it must be a short somewhere. this has started recently along with something else very strange. my car dosen't shut off right away when you turn the key off. it will run for a bit then slowly it dies maybe 5 seconds later. and sometimes when you start it the tach dosen't work and you have to restart it a couple times. maybe these are different prblems but they all started about the same time. if any one could help me out with any of these problems that would be sweet. oh and i had to wire a "hot" wire to my passenger side window. i don't know if this would cause any of the above problems. please anyone with experience with any of these problems, thanks

 

I had a similar problem and it turned out to be nasty battery terminals and loose as hell terminal ends... cleaned them up and made them tight, Sears even said battery is fine, don't bother replacing it.

It caused a host of problems, but none of the ones you describe, mostly alarm and clock, radio memory probs which would be normal.

 

You have an electrical symptom. What you need to do is isolate what circuit the problem is originating from. The easiest way to do it is pull all the fuses one by one. After pulling each fuse, determine if the car exhibits the same symptom as before. If it doesn't then your problem is somewhere in the circuit for the last fuse that was pulled. You'll then have to go to the FSM and see what items are on that circuit.

Now put the culprit fuse back in and for each of the items that were on the circuit you will want to disconnect them one by one till your symptom goes away. When this happens, you've found the wiring that is causing your issue.

Hope i helped.

 

The current draw should be tested using a Digital Multi- Meter, so you know what kind of draw you have.

Incorrectly "hot wiring" your passengers window can cause the draw as well as eventually burn out your ignition switch (which sounds like is happening).

Not fixing your car correctly is probably causing your problems, not Mazda's wiring.

 

It \really sounds like a failing ignition switch.

 

thanks mark you were right.

for anyone searching, the wire to the window, which was hot from the battery all the time, caused: my car to not shut off right away, my alarm to go off at random, my tach to not work sometimes, and my battery to discharge overnight. took that wire out again and now every thing is back to normal. i'm guessing the alarm senses when unnatural battery discharge occurs to provide one extra level of security.

about the window, what would be my best source for providing a new 12 v supply for the window? this is the only way it will work, i have replaced and cleaned the switch more than once. thanks

 

The best source would be the Black/Blue coming from the drivers power window switch.

 

thanks again