the motor would continue to craw current as it was trying to park the blades.

craw current is supposed to read draw current.

 

Thank you all for your inputs. I removed the battery and cleaned all of the wires with steel wool. I removed the ground wire as well as the starter solenoid conections and cleaned them too. I put a new battery in and it cranked right up. If this battery does the same thing, then I am going to take it in and have them test as you guys suggested. I am hoping that the cleaning of all the wires and posts will help but I agree that it shouldn't cause the battery to drain. When the Ford place tested it, they claim that there was no draw on the battery. This is very strange. Is it possible that it could be computer related? Maybe a stuck relay?

 

Ahah, so KAH we meet again. lol

Neato question and you are thinking out side of the box. In theory this would work. But the battery serves another function in the electrical system that the charger can not. It works as a buffer/sponge/dampener (or however you feel like descibing it) to absorb voltage spikes and irregularites in the system. Installing a charger in place of the battery will eliminate the damping quality and provide the vehicle electronics with somewhat unregulated or un-protected current and voltage. If something were staying on, the inital blast of switching on the charger could non-discriminately fry it. Risky Move!

The battery being in or out though is irrelevant. Some chargers/battery monitors and electrical diagnostics will measure amp draw, and the battery being in the system wont matter.

Oh,,,,, and less common but possible to drain batteries is a bad diode in the alternator allowing current flow in both directions. Not common but I've seen it.

 

There is another test to run on the battery. Its called a sulfation test. Attach a battery charger that is capable of 20 amp charging. Attach your volt meter to the battery and turn on the charger at 20 amps. If the battery voltage goes over 15.2 volts in the first 2 minutes the battery is internally sulfated. The effects is a dead battery after a couple of days. What happens is the voltage regulator reads that high voltage on the battery and cuts back the alternator. Thus the battery is not recieving a good charge. This is a hard condition to detect, because everything is working properly and the battery will usually pass load testing. Brand new batteries can be sulfated from sitting up on the shelf too long. Some chargers have a setting that will "burn" the sulfation off if its not too bad. I do not know if this hurts the battery or not. On another note.. Fun with batteries. If you kill a battery DEAD DEAD like maybe 2 volts or less it can be charged backwards..

 

Just a little inside note to NGM's reply. The battery has to be dead dead as in no volts. One of the 6 cells in the battery will switch polarity giving you positive...negative...{negative...positive}....pos itive..... negative and in such state will not take a charge at all. { } is annotating the switched cell. The negative to negative creates an open since like charges repel. To remedy this you "shock" the reversed cell with a much higher voltage in the original polarity to realign its poles. Good little trick I learned when I was into remote controlled hobbies.

 

This sounds like a problem we used to have with My beloved 60's Cadillacs. They had powered everything. When ever this sort of thing happened, as suggest above, you would start pulling fuses to find out what circuit had power thing hanging on it that was not shutting down. As suggested start at the battery.