does leaving your lights on run the battery down?

Why do you want to leave the lights on anyway? As John as stated above i agree? Obviously you can leave the side lights on if you are just popping in somewhere for a moment but as opposed to leaving them on overnight especially in freezing cold weather when the battery needs as much juice in the morning to start the van. In answer to your question NO only momentarily, Just leave your radio on overnight and see what happens in the morning.

Carlito Corway
January 2008

Sure it does - the more and higher wattage lamps you leave on, the quicker your battery will run down. Side lamps and internal lamps don't use a lot of current though, and if you have a large capacity battery (or 2 in parallel as per some transits) it could take a while.

John
January 2008