Of batteries and current draw
 

I've been spending more time with the saturn now the metro is gone and lately it has been dead if left to sit for a few days. It always bump/jump starts and restarts the rest of the day though.

Now it is an older trolling battery, has served many years, so to alleviate any suspense, the battery IS marginal. But what is interesting is that I was troubleshooting it with a couple VOMs, and it was at 9.8 volts, drawing .03 amps after it quiets down.

So I unplugged the guino and the current went to .01 amps and the voltage started climbing up, with a plateau about 10.2 volts.

Well I still had the solar panel from the metro so I installed it in the saturn for now, and I expect it will probably stay ready for starting for a while to come with just that much boost. But the lesson here is that even a paltry 20 milliamps can expose a marginal battery in a few days. I will have to put further power savings on my very slow moving todo list.

update: I am an idiot.

Battery just needed water. It's fine, everything is fine, years of so-called "no maintenance" batteries set my battery maintenance brain cells on atrophy.

lol, good to hear dcb. :)