thank you forum!!

occasionally I have to work on my mother's 99 Taurus 3.0 pushrod engine, and the last time the IAC was the problem-thanks to Shorod and other posts on here I fixed it! Lately, the battery has been draining itself and after some tests and reading the forum I read about a guy and his RAP module (I have no idea what this stands for) but It is for your FOB and power locks I guess and sure enough hers never worked. anyways, once I unplugged this RAP module the draw went from like 0.035 to 0.020 on the 10 amp scale on my meter (to be honest I am not sure if this is amps or milliamps or what) but it would appear to be a significant difference!! thank you AF!!

RAP = Remote Anti-theft Personality module.

With the setting at the 10-amp scale, your readings are probably 35 mA and 20 mA respectively. The 35 mA draw doesn't seem too high, I think the factory considers something like 70 mA to be normal. I'm going off of memory though.

-Rod

The acceptable draw on Ford products is around .055 or under. It may take up to an hour on the Taurus for the GEM to go to sleep and the draw drop to that level.

well-i guess that shoots my theory out of the water-the other thing i noticed was that with a test light in place of the meter on neg cable, the test light will light up (which i thought was bad) so i started the no-brain fuse pull and not one made a difference on test light-that's when i dug out my meter and found the readings that i stated. question:should a test light come on when doing this test? guys here think no! but, how much draw does it take to light a tiny bulb! i am getting lost on this quick-and her battery keeps going dead. only thing left that i can think of is a starter draw test (which i don't know of a test with a cheap meter) any suggestions i would appreciate.

How old is the battery? There is a good chance sulfates have built up on the plates due to seldom use and that's a big part of the issue with low capacity. Try to find a place that can test the conductance of the battery to get a good feel for health of the battery.

A test light may light a bit when in series with the battery cable. It should not be a high intensity glow though, unless you have a door open or hoodlight on, etc. Also, keep in mind the Taurus may have illuminated exit delay that activates when the battery is first reconnected. The glow of the test light could be due to the illuminated exit trying to turn on the interior lights.

-Rod

I'll second the motion on the "thank you" to the forum. My son has 97 Taurus with 174K that threw a code for the EGR valve. After doing some research here, I was able to follow the diagnostics that someone had via a link and was able to determine that his DPFE was bad as opposed to the EGR valve itself. Thanks again.