just read 12.5 volts between the neg batt terminal and the battery. I removed all fuses and relays one at a time, inside and out, with no change in voltage. The strange thing is the battery still reads 12 volts at the ground even with the positive terminal removed from the battery..... My problem just got more strange huh?

UPDATE: I started the car, removed the battery and installed another one I had lying around. I did not get any voltage reading from the negative terminal....I thought maybe the battery screwed up BUT......... I reinstalled the old battery and checked the voltage on the ground before hooking up the positive side and it was ZERO....until I hooked up the positive cable...then it read the 12.5 volts and still will now if I unhook the positive terminal again....I'm so confused

 

Its static so it should be closer to DC then AC but not the same thing. The wattage is constant but voltage is uncontroled. The distance you are from the source once it decides to jump to the meter has a huge effect on the voltage. This is why static electicity is so bad on a fuel injected car. You let a connector get too close to that and it can arc 100 volts into your PCM.

I have a feeling once you track down the draw you may find your issue. One mistake newer guy make when tracking a draw is the fact they keep opening and closing the door and the draw keeps changing. Ya that the dome light trying to light. They figure out that they need to pull the dome light fuse to do the test, If the draw is on that circuit your kinda screwed, atleast until you figure it out and test with the door switch pulled out ya I was new once.

 

are there any amp capacitors in the system

 

With one side of the meter connected to ground, and the other side of the meter connected to what?

 

From what he's saying it sounds like he's getting a voltage reading between the battery case and the negative terminal. If that's true he has a battery case that is contaminated with a very conductive substance. Electrolyte?

 

Sounds to me like you may have a capacitors, Do you have an AMP in the car? I guess I should have said right away, Step one in any auto eletrical issue, dissconnect all non-factory wiring. See if the problem goea away. Do not reconnect intil the issue is fixed.

 

Connected to the body or frame.......I'm starting to think I may be going crazy guys.

The latest issue tracked down with the brand new very functional multimeter...is..... When the positive terminal of the multimeter is attached to the positive post on the battery AND the Negative terminal of the multimeter is placed against the PLASTIC side of the battery near the bottom edge, directly below the negative post ...... I read around 5 to 8 volts DC.

I know you may ask how and why I figured that out. I have resorted to touching everything under the hood trying to find the source of the arc......

? Why is this happening?

Oh yeah, I have also installed a new belt. It made no changes.

The car is equipped with a factory amplifier and subwoofer located somewhere in the back. I honestly haven't bothered to locate it yet. The only thing that is not factory is the stereo itself. In this model Camaro, that has the amp, the wiring harness from autozone doesn't have one of the wires needed to power the amp and the stereo will not work until it is powered.You have to splice some wire into another wire... I forget exactly which ones but anyway... I've pulled the stereo and pulled all radio related fuses.....no change. I will look further into the amp tomorrow and report all the new and weird things I find wrong with it...or not.

I honestly just remembered that shortly before this all started I installed subwoofers and a non factory amp. The non factory amp seemed to be burnt up or something because it would only make the subwoofers stick straight out like they were hitting hard but just staying there. The factory amp was still functional too....Didn't think about that. I unhooked the new amp very quickly and it had instantly drained the battery. I charged the battery overnight, changed the cable ends, removed all the non factory stereo stuff and everything seemed to be fine for about a week or so. I bet this is directly related...........I forgot all about it
Thanks for all the help and ideas so far guys.