Over the last mo I've been chasing the battery drain and I made some progress - hopefully finding it. And I'm tired of A-hole having his blatant ads for chinese diagnostic tools at the top of the heap. So here's what I did and found:
I disconnected the ground end of the negative battery cable and hooked a multimeter to it and the ground. Set the meter to 10a. I was getting a draw.
I started pulling fuses in blocks of 5 and checking my multimeter.
Finally a change after the 5th block of 5:
Tracked it down to fuse 24. Hmmm, that's the same fuse that blew back in the spring. Part of its duty is running half of the digital dash. Took the dash pod off as there was a wire I wanted to track down, thinking maybe it was shorting something. Found the wire and it was properly grounded (at least on that end, the other goes somewhere into the console). So I put everything back together.
Did some research on RL and found a thread about fuse 24. It also runs all the int lights and there was a chance one of them was grounding onto the body. Starting with fuse 24 in, I was getting this reading:
Pulled the center int light and removed the bulb. No change in reading. Pulled the passenger door light and removed the bulb. No change. Pulled the driver's door light and removed the bulb. No change. Was a bit disappointed but remembered there's a light in the hatch. Pulled the light, removed the bulb. Bingo:
The thread also said to check the bulb in the glove box. I did but it was blown, so no chance there.
I'll do more testing on if that's solved my parasitic problem next wk by leaving the battery connected and see how many days can go by w/o a battery issue. I have a car show for tomorrow, so for now I'll keep disconnecting the neg cable as I don't want a possibly dead battery tomorrow morning.
And I'll go back and see why I'm having the issue, but for now I'm happy to have potentially found where I'm having the issue.