parasitic draws

I worked on a friend's Cutlbutt that had the same symptoms, but intermittently. Every 1-3 days, the battery would be dead after an overnight sit. Pulling the battery cable off and inserting a digital meter in current mode, and there was less than 10mA flowing to run the radio-clock. That will never run the battery down in a day or two or even a week. Dome lights, trunk lights, and glove box lights were all suspect, but not the problem I had

After six days of experiments, I used a clamp-on DC ammeter (Fluke made one that used a Hall-effect sensor to read DC amps - normal clamp on ammeters can't do DC, just AC) to read the steady-state current draw when the car was turned off. The ammeter read 1.5 - 2A about every third time I turned off the car, not zero. The reason to use the clamp-on ammeter instead of the 10A range of the Fluke 77 DVM was that I wanted to be able to start the car, then read the turned off current after the ignition switch was off. The high starter current would have fried the 10Amp range shunt resistor inside the Fluke 77 meter.

With a clamp on ammeter, there is no shunt resistor to fry, and the reading was the true current flow in the battery wire. (I'm an electrical engineer for a day job. :-)

The problem with the car was the engine computer wasn't reliably going into sleep shutdown mode after the ignition was turned off. I could have found that by doing wholesale component swapping, or by spending more money on parts. That's not elegant. When the computer didn't go into sleep mode, it was sitting there running 1-2 amps on its own, thinking that the ignition key was on and the car was about to start.

Swapped the computer ($75 exchange at the local parts place) and the problem went away for good.

Your problem might still be a dome or glove box light you haven't found yet. But if you have a buddy with a similar vehicle, you might try exchanging engine computers with him and see what happens. -- Bill "the Roadie" Carton