Hi All,
My 1996 1.6XEL Astra decided to not start this week, and I had time to take a meter to it this weekend. Jump starting yesterday worked fine, and we got 13.8 V across the battery terminals with the engine running, dropping by only ~0.3 V when all lights + window heater + blower were turned on, so I think this means the alternator is off the hook... I did notice that after turning off the engine the voltage was dropping pretty quickly, and after leaving it overnight the battery voltage was ~7.5 V.
With everything off, the current drain overloads my 20 Amp meter, so I started pulling fuses. With a completely empty main fusebox I still had a huge drain, so I went looking for others. I found 4 Maxi fuses in a box under the bonnet (3 80 Amp, 1 20 Amp) pictured here:
The Haynes does list some Maxi fuses at 80 and 20 Amps on the wiring diagrams (but for 1997+ cars only...), but unhelpfully seems to call them pre-fuses - one of the 80 Amps seems to head off to the starter motor, the 20 Amp fuse goes off to the horn (?), and the other two seem to only lead to other stuff protected by other fuses (the ones I've already removed). Though I'm not convinced I'm reading this stuff right..
Any other ideas for tracking down the problem?
Thanks,
Mick Brooks