yeah. the joke is on me tonight fellas! That's ok...at least I didn't have to fork out a couple hundred bucks on an alternator and/or battery! I discovered this issue when I brought the meter back into the house and measure a 1.5V D cell flashlight battery and it measure 2 volts! I couldn't believe it and then I started to trouble shoot the meter and first thing I did was flip the backlight off and bam! 1.49 volts on the D cell. I wanted to take my splitting maul and go out on a stump and crush that crap o meter!!! Glad you guys can have a good laugh on me! Ohh. and I went back to what I started out checking which was an amp draw that was draining the battery. Found that and fixed it so hopefully no more dead battery too! thanks for all the help guys!