"John Morgan" wrote
Don't have an ammeter (some cheaper multimeters don't), no problem. Just
hook a resistor (a car tail lamp bulb will do) between the battery terminal
and the wire you removed from that terminal. Set the meter to read DC
voltage and hook one lead to the battery terminal and the other to the wire
(this would be in parallel with the resister or bulb). There should be no
voltage drop across the resister and thus the meter should read zero volts.

This isn't going to work for a slow leak (anything less than about 50
ma) because at low current, the resistance of a tail light is nearly
zero.

The typical glider battery is about 6 Ah, which means a 50 ma leak
will drain the battery flat in about a week.

There are all kinds of problems that cause slow leaks. A friend of
mine once discovered about a 20 ma leak in his installation where the
leakage was through the battery box grommet.

Michael

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