Help! Power Drain on 1998 Taurus Wagon!

We have had this car for almost 9 years. Always worked fine, never had any major problems... I love this car, it's my baby...
The only problem we had so far was the alternator went out a bit over a year ago, and we had to get a new one...
A few months after the alternator went in, something else went wrong... There is something that is draining the power and it needs to be "jumped" to get started... We had the alternator checked, and were told it was working fine....
We bought a new battery, thinking the battery was bad, and it is still doing it...

Any ideas what it could be???
Any help or suggestions would be appreciated! :)
Thank you!

Welcome to the forum!

You're going to need to do some troubleshooting to identify which circuit is causing the draw on the system. You could get lucky and find that something simple like the glovebox light or the trunk light is not turning off when closed, or it could be something a bit more challenging to identify.

If you cannot find a bad switch, you're going to need a current meter to put in series with one of the battery cables. If your car has a light that goes on when the hood is opened, remove that bulb. Let the car sit with the hood open and doors closed for at least 45 minutes to hopefully go in to sleep mode, then determine if the draw is greater than 70 mA (0.070 A). If so, Ford says the draw is too high. Start pulling fuses 1 at a time until you find one that causes the draw to fall below 70 mA.

Once you identify the trouble circuit, then you'll need a wiring diagram to determine what all is on that circuit. I can help with the diagram if you send me a private message with an e-mail address for you and the request.

-Rod

Thank you SOOO much Rod! I had Hubby read your post, and he is going to do as you suggested... :) Hopefully this will fix the problem. :) Thanks again!

Good luck, let us know what you find!

-Rod

You don't happen to have a cassette tape stuck in the radio, do you?