Ladies and gentlemen, here we have a '93 diesel escort with a tendancy to flatten the battery every couple of days if only used for short trips.
With a known good battery in it, and running the engine at 2000 rpm the voltage across the battery terminals is around the 14V mark, so I take this to indicate that the alternator is actually doing its charging function.
Have Googled and found references to testing parasitic drain, and have just gone through that - I read somewhere that the drain should be no more than around 75 milliamps - this one is losing 0.52 amps so [unless Escorts drain this much normally] I think I'm now on the right track.
Pulling the fuses made a negligable difference of 1 or 2 milliamps. Pulling the relays occasionally made a similar difference. Pulling the fuse on top of the fusebox [f#29] drops this right down to
20 milliamps.As a double-check, this test was repeated with a known dodgy fusebox [standard heater motor / electric window fault] and similar readings were obtained.
According to Mr. Haynes, this fuse copes with the central locking and the alarm, but [with the fuse in] the central locking seems to work fine, and the alarm does its bleepy thing when arming it through locking the drivers door.
Putting the alarm into test mode gets a beep when all the doors and boot are opened so I'm tempted to think that the door switches are OK.
I have a nagging feeling that the alternator or possibly the boot switch / contact plate thingy could have a hand in this, but I'm not exactly logical when it comes to car electrics, so, any ideas as to what to check for next?