In simple terms, "sometimes" my battery will be pretty flat in the morning. Now to the details:
For starters, the battery is an Optima Red Top, less than three years old, and doesn't seem to be the problem. I substituted another battery for about a month and still occasionally experienced the problem.
By pretty flat, I mean that the starter would engage and painfully turn over the engine one or two revolutions before giving up.
By "sometimes" I mean just that: some mornings it'll jump to life like it's still got the full charge that the previous day's driving gave it. Other times barely turn over.
I've done some homework with the wiring diagrams in the FSM and have prepared a troubleshooting plan to try to pinpoint what appears to be an errant, sporadic short. However, I've got to do that one of those mornings when it's experienced the drainage overnight. If I had to take an educated guess off the top of my head, I think it might be a bad relay that gets energized when the ignition switch is turned on, but that the secondary side of the relay sometimes to fail to disengage when power is removed from the primary side (and that power to the secondary side does not run thru the ignition switch).
My question: Have any of you guys experienced something similar and if so, were you able to identify and solve the problem?

 

It wouldn't be a short (that would most likely be blowing fuses) but a parasitic drain somewhere. Have you taken an ammeter and seen how much is being drawn from the battery with the car off?

 

That's the first thing that came to my mind as well. Then start pulling fuses etc to see who the culprit is.

Hey Curt.

 

Search:
Ground wiring
Starter Gounding
Hard Start
Starting problems
Ignition switch
Intermittant start
Voltage Drop Test in Google is a good one too.
etc.
Ultimately I'll be testing starter voltage drop when I get my car back.
use google if it doesn't come up in forums. Happy reading. Sounds like grounding problem, but read them.

 

Although that phrase "parasitic drain" didn't come to mind as I was writing the post, that's exactly what best describes it. And the plan is to hook up my ammeter when it's in that failure mode and section-by-section of the wiring system (Page EL-6 of the FSM) isolate and troubleshoot to zero in on the culprit. But my instincts are pointing me first towards the relays, as the "sometimes" nature of the problem is exactly how I would expect a failing relay to behave.

 

Another possibility occurred to me: something like the light in the trunk, which has power available to its circuit with the ignition turned off, but the microswitch that's supposed to sense when the trunk lid is open or closed fails to turn it off all the time when it's supposed to. Same sort of thing with the power antennae if the switch that's supposed to sense when it's fully lowered (when you turn the ignition switch off) isn't picking up that signal (although in that case I'm sure I would have been hearing the motor in the antennae straining to get it down the rest of the way).
When this drainage does happen, you'd almost guess that something like an interior light had been left on overnight.

 

When you have mornings when its hard to start, does it start after some more time trying, or you have to put the battery on a booster ??

-matt

 

On mornings when I have the problem, the battery's almost dead, will strain to turn the engine over only one or two revolutions, not nearly enough to fire. That's when I need to hook up a charger.
Other mornings when there's no problem the engine jumps right to life in the first second or two of cranking (even at below-freezing temperatures).

 

If the problem is solved by charging the battery the parasitic drain explanation is right on. If you had a problem such as a bad starter or other relay charging the battery would not solve/help it. I forget what the normal current draw is for the Maxima when it is just sitting there, it's in one of the posts. This may help http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?t=368544

 

sounds like you have an aftermarket leprechaun messing things up for you