190e electrical issues
 

Well it has been a while since I last was here asking for help. I have not been able to drive my 190e in months and I am tired of paying insurance on a non-drivable car. So, I am back asking for help again. I have an electrical draw somewhere. I have the battery POS terminal disconnected. When I connec it, there is a spark, not real big, but enough to see in daylight and hear. I have removed my aftermarket radio and ALL the fuses and relays from the fuseblock and the amount of spark has NOT changed. Can someone please point me in the right direction? Is there some common short out area in 190e's? I have a 1985 190e 2.3 8V. Oh yeah, if I keep the battery connected, it is dead in a matter of hours.

I had a starter solonoid do that. It worked fine but had a partial internal short.

The alternator could do that too if it had an obscure problem.

Not everything is fused, and anything that could spark probably wouldn't be fused.

Have you connected an ammeter to measure the current draw? Some current draw (10-20? ma) is normal, any more would be cause for concern. If you find you do have excessive current draw, pull fuses one by one until the current draw drops significantly. Once it drops significantly when you pull a certain fuse, you've narrowed your search to that particular circuit.

I had someone here suggest a while back to pull the fuses one by one. I did that and that is how I got down to NO fuses left in the box. It seems that no, fuse resulted in less draw. I will, however, have the alt and starter checked profesionally. Thanks for the help.

I used an ammeter to measure the draw. It is drawing 1.7 amps with no key on and no fuses or relays in the fuse block. I also have the OVP out. I fear that I will never be able to find this short (perhaps a few thousand bucks spent at the dealer could find it). I guess I just need to start disconnecting components in the engine bay and see when the draw stops. I sure hope the issue IS in the engine compartment.. atleast it will be easy to fix in there. I hate to think of a short under the dash.