Radio cuts out

[TX82FIAT]

Mike, that is a lot of stereo through the ignition. the relay is a great idea. Have you given any consideration to just running the amps off the battery?

[surfingfreeman]

yeah it is quite a system, and yes the amps go straight to the battery the head-unit power to the ignition draws very little and just is used to send a signal to the amps to "Wake-up". Now though i am having trouble with the alarm system, it keeps false alarming, it never does it while im parked at work, but when i park in my condo underground parking it goes off with a pattern related to the minutes off the hour for example, this monday it went off at:
10:12PM
then tuesday it went off at the following times:
12:13AM
02:13AM
04:13AM
so they are each 2hrs apart and occur at 13-minutes after the hour, too much of a ppattern to be random and as you can imagine the neighbors must be thrilled, i finally turned the whole system off. I had the alarm installer tune down the motion detector and the IR detector so maybe something is wrong with the units "Brain", any thoughts. I really don't think it is being caused by external sources i.e cars driving by or cats jumping on the car. Any help would be appreciated

[richfolsom]

well, I've gone from worse to even worst. I removed the relay, connected the original red wires together, and tried to start the car. All I heard was the clicking sound that you get when the battery is low. I hooked up my jumper cables, and tried to start it, and nothing, no sound or anything. Then, I saw a little smoke coming out behind the stereo. I unplugged the jumpers, which were extremely hot. I guess my next step is to look under there for any melted wires. Hopefully, I'll get some good learning experiences out of this.

[richfolsom]

Well, I'm back. Didn't want to work on the car during the summer (too hot!). I finally got all the alarm stuff removed, battery was totally dead, so I bought a new one. Now car runs, but I'm back to square one with the radio. I'm going to try to change the connection to the fuse box, maybe that's bad. Now I have 2 questions:

Do you think this brown wire fix will help?

I used a multimeter to check for battery drain, it was showing 270 microAmps. I disconnected fuse 11 and it dropped down to 120. Does anyone know if this is normal?

Thanks,
Rich

[RRoller123]

check the drain with the clock disconnected too?

[richfolsom]

That is with the clock unplugged, I can try unplugging the radio.

[kolls]

I had the same problem my radio cut out when I would accelerate .. Come to find out my altenator was overcharging I replaced my altenator and that fixed it...

[tdskip]

That is with the clock unplugged, I can try unplugging the radio.

Newbie here, but electrons are electrons so here it goes. I'd focus on just one challenge at a time in case you are trying to run down multple issues. For the head unit I'd think you want to pick up from the fuse box from a circuit that handles AUX power so whe the key is off the systen is as well. Generally the closer to stock the better and I had to rip out about 10 pounds of hacked wiring on my 911 before I got rid of all the ghosts of the prior alarm system. The other plus is that other members can help more readily, and of course Brad's diagram are a lot more useful.

Once things are closer to stock chasing any drains is a ton easier as well since you know for sure what is connected to what.

Feel free to disguard as I am a newbie.

[richfolsom]

Thanks everyone for your response. I think I got it back to stock (with the exception of the radio). My next step will be to disable the radio to see if I have any draw after that. Then I want to see if maybe I need to find a better fuse to link to. Any other advice is appreciated.

[richfolsom]

ok, so now, my passenger tail light isn't working. I replaced the bulb and tried it in another outlet, so I know the bulb is ok. I did notice that there are 2 wires coming out of the driver's side that went to a ground. When I fidgeted with that wire, I was able to make the passenger light come on, but the driver's side light would get more dull. So, I took off the screw, and wire brushed it to get through the paint. However, still no luck. I don't know if it's related, but the dash lights are also out (they previously worked). I haven't gotten to look at those yet, but I'm wondering if there's a ground up front that I'm missing. I'll go back and look at the wiring diagrams to see if I'm missing something (I'm not really an expert at reading them).

Thanks for your help so far.