I have fixed everything else on this vehicle. But I can't find the short. If I unhook the battery cable when not driving, the battery stays up. Battery was tested, it is good. Alternator was tested, it is charging. I have looked it all over in pitch black, there are no lights on anywhere. The brake lights are not sticking on. If I leave the cable hooked up, the battery will go down in a couple days. Is there a common place for these vehicles to have a short?

 

No common place that I know of.
Does your vehicle have a glove box lite?
What kind of test equip do you have ,if any, to use?

 

No glove box. I have a voltmeter. Guess I need to buy a multimeter. If it ever gets warm here, I have a new alternator to put on, In case it is a bad diode. I had enough AutoZone Rewards to get one for less than $10. Odd thing is, sometimes I can forget to unhook the battery for a couple days and it will start. Next time, the battery will be dead.

 

Using a multimeter, I quit getting the draw only when the clock fuse is removed. Trying the other fuses one at a time, with the meter hooked between the neg post and the neg cable changes nothing. How much draw should there be for that fuse? It only shows a draw of about 10 on the meter, set on the 250 scale. fuse is for "dome, cargo and courtesy lamps, cigarette lighter, clock. I realize these draw all the time.
If that is a normal draw, then I would think it must be a diode in the alternator? Can't get under it today to check the wire.

 

Just so we are on the same page.
The meter should be placed on the amps or milliamp scale then the leads should be placed between the battery post and the cable end. If this is what you did , fine. 10 amps is a lot of draw. The general accepted standard is 50 milliamps or .05 amps.
Anything more is considered excessive. When you can , if you took the hot wire off the alt that goes to the solenoid or the positive post of the battery and left that off it would take the alt out of the system. If you still have a considerable draw then you need to start disconnecting those items controlled by the fuse one at a time until you see the draw drop. I'm pretty sure you knew all this, but just thought I would cover it anyway.
Let us know what you find, thanks.

 

With that fuse out and the battery cables back on, it shows a 10 draw across the battery.

 

What setting and what scale are you using to get the 10? Are you using the amps or milliamps setting?

You can also use the amps setting and place the probes in the two clips that the fuse would go into. That would also give you the amp current draw reading for that circuit.

 

It says V.mA, so I'm guessing that it is milliamps.

 

Hope I can explain ,
As you know when we measure volts we measure in parallel with the circuit looking for a "back-up".
When we measure current,amps,milliamps everything has to go through the meter so the probes are connected in series.
Just about all multimeters have a separate terminal hole for the one probe (red one) to measure amps and this set-up makes everything go through the meter. If you used this set-up trying to measure volts you would provide a direct short path and meters have a fuse in them to protect the tool from the damage of a direct short circuit.
I have never seen any meter that measured volts and amps from the same setting and probes in the same position for volts.
If the meter is built to measure amps it should have a separate hole for the red probe. The black one stays in usual position.
If I didn't explain it clear enough, let me know and I should be able to help.

 

There is only one hole for the red probe.