I have a 1999 F350 7.3 4x4. My truck was cranking slow in our mild winter so I got the mulitimeter out and discovered the drivers side battery was showing 11.24 volts so I disconnected both batteries and charged it. Charging did not brining up the volts so I replaced the battery. After that I checked for battery draw down by disconnecting the passenger battery then checking the amp draw on the negative terminal on the driver side battery, it showed 180 mA draw (should only have 50mA?) so I started pulling fuses, when I pulled fuse 15 (the 5 amp fuse on the GEM circuit) the draw went down to 50 mA. Thinking the GEM was bad I went to the salvage yard and bought a used GEM from same year with same D version from a wrecked 7.3. I installed it and started it up and the Airbag light came on and ABS. I shut it down and checked the draw down and it was the same 180 mA as with my original GEM. Now I am thinking the GEM I bought was bad, so I installed my old GEM back in but now I have the AIr bag light on and the speedometer and blinkers down work, strange they worked before and the only issue I had with my orgiginal GEM was the draw down. Why won't my old GEM work as it did? Can I live with 180mA drawdown? Now I am confused. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

I don't know if this helps or not but I had some weird stuff going on. I.e. my horn going off for no reason in the middle of the night, radio problems, lights.... ended up pulling the GEM and it looked fine. Found out that the wind shield was leaking and running down the a-pillar. Then it was leaking on top of the fuse block and g e m unit. What I ended up doing was drilling out the rivets that held the fuse block together and separating it all and cleaning it it was shorting out between the different layers. I also had battery draw down and it would drain my battery if I didn't start the truck every couple days. There is a video on YouTube on how to do this it's not too difficult it's just long and tedious. I hope this helps! Hope you have a great New Year!