Power Blocks

[ggehrke at gmail.com (GGehrke)]

> Which by the way... you mentioned inductive meters aren't cost effective...
> I agree but what's in the Callaway.  Appears to be a VDO ammeter.  How is
> that wired?  It always reads low.  Even on a freshly charged battery.  Is it
> inductance?  It is inline with the fuse box?  I don't see very large cables
> going there.

I had a VDO ammeter once that had two relatively tiny little leads
going to it.  Found it in a box in a VW bus in a junkyard, so I never
saw how it was supposed to be wired.  Never actually used it for
anything so I still don't know if it was supposed to be in line or
what.

When you mentioned that I was thinking, "could you wrap a regular wire
around the battery cable and measure current in that to make your own
clamp ammeter," but then I realized I was an idiot and that would only
work for AC, but then I realized, "then how the hell do clamp ammeters
that they do use on cars work," so I googled that for about 30 seconds
and gave up because I have to go do some laundry.

If you have problems with a slow drain you might want to install a
master killswitch as well.  You might loose things like radio memory
unless you wire that up independently, but a master switch would not
be hard to install and would at least be a stopgap if you don't have
time to do an exhaustive diagnosis.

-Grant-