Left the key in the car last night, in the off position. Didn't think it would hurt anything.

Went out to the car and it's dead. Airbag light was on, but the dash was totally dead. No power at all, and obviously it wouldn't crank.

I put in on the porsche trickle charger and almost immediately started hearing small motors start whirring on and off.

Does just having the key in the ignition activate something that would draw off the battery?

 

Yeah...I think that's why so many people here use that (stupid?) battery maintainer. You have to pull the key out to turn everything off (my V1 is hooked up to that circuit). I pull the key and put it back in to ignition.

 

One question: why leave the key in the car? Asking for trouble.

 

it's in the locked garage. i had finally cleaned it yesterday and forgot the key in there.

 

If you have PCM2, it will kill it even faster. When the key is in the ignition it's on even if it's off, the screen is just black, but the nav module is still pulling voltage.

 

no pcm, but something is definately drawing power. lesson learned. take the key

my trickle charger seems to doing it's job as I have dome lights now!

 

Leave the trickle overnight, should crank tomorrow. Good luck!

 

The radio stays on if the key is in the ignition.

 

there's the culprit. left my ipod going in there too. i got to be more careful. now my ipod and my car won't start

 

Interestingly enough my 996 has been in storage for 6 weeks with the porsche battery maintainer, and this past weekend I turned on the ignition power on to get a CD out of the player. As soon as I turned the key on, the battery maintainer turned on immediately... that thing really works!

 

the maintainer is money well spent. it really works. i left my car on it all night after this fiasco and it fired right up the next day. it still took a drive for it to totally get back to normal ( my one touch pass. window feeature wasn't working for a minute or two), but now it's business as usual.

key out = good unless you don't mind a dead battery.