short background, my car battery will often be too flat to start the car if I don't use it for about 48 hours. Worst it happened the other day after leaving it at airport car park for 4 days and come 10pm ready to go home it was flat, AA came and it was reading 7 volts. Took car to Kwik Fit next day for a battery check and came back no problems.
So, given the battery's health seems to be fine, after doing some reading I thought I would get a multimeter to check how many amps the battery is using when the car isn't running, as my assumption is there must be a drain from somewhere. I managed to use it to check the volts late last night (12.56) and this morning, it was around 12.26. Following some guides (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdIKNnwEjIs | http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/how-to/a5859/how-to-stop-car-battery-drains/ | http://www.wikihow.com/Find-a-Parasitic-Battery-Drain) I tried to check the amps but when I do it, I believe I see a 3.something come up on the multimeter but when putting the test probe on the end of the black cable onto the negative battery post, it creates a spark, and so naturally I just took the probe off it straight away as to not cause any (further) damage.
This is the multimeter I bought - http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/7015603.htm
Car is a 2004 Subaru Impreza GX Sport.
When checking the amps I put the black cable in the COM port and the RED cable in the 10A port and set the dial to A_ (DC) 20m/10A (just to the bottom left of the dial)
Just don't know if those settings are right and why there would be sparks? Don't know if it is a problem with the car/battery terminals/posts or just the settings on the multimeter.
Any help would be greatly appreciated as I really want to just be able to measure the amps so I can find a paristic battery drain.