[s-cars] Current draw/dead battery

[Jim Furdyn]

On today's episode of "What did Jim do to his S-pig today?" we'll discuss
what the "removing pin 8 from the central lock/interior light control
procedure yielded towards the ghost current draw/dead battery problem.

 

As stated, the above procedure was a simple one and was (and still could be)
a possible avenue to go down as far as eliminating possible culprits. This
morning, I saw that the meter was indicating a hair more than 12.0 vdc, so I
knew the car would not start. I tried and the voltage dropped to below 10.0
vdc and tried to turn the flywheel for a second and then gave up on that and
started clicking. So it has been concluded that the above procedure did not
yield a remedy to the problem.

 

I removed the Kenwood 10 disc CD changer from the trunk a few months back,
because I never use it and I currently run a single CD, Nakamichi CD-400
head unit and use the AUX function for MP3's. Today when I removed the
driver side lower dash area to gain access to the relay panel behind it, I
noticed a control module tucked way up under the dash. I found a power
control module for the Kenwood DC changer?! I traced the wires and it was
powered up via the hot leads going to the radio factory harness. I cut the
wires and removed the entire unit. I then pulled the radio and made sure
there was nothing there out of the ordinary. So I'll let it fly like this to
see if the current draw was eliminated.

 

I also double checked the head unit powering up the amps, just to make sure
that the radio was not bleeding power to a battery sucker. No joy, the radio
works correctly so when the head unit is off, the amps are off/ when the
head unit is on, the amps are on.

 

Stay tuned for the next episode titled "Did it fix it?!"

 

Happy Holidays,

 

Jim