Modern Era car radios - what you should know

[tlcruiserman]

I have been talking to several people over the last year or so that have had battery draining problems even though they have the converter correct or balanced depending on what they are doing. The one question I always ask that very few people know is about the change that took place by radio manufacturers about 6-8 years ago:

Most car audio has several dedicated power leads as we all know - Red is main power - yellow is memory - orange is power antenna or amp switch. Also most know you hook the yellow to constant power for memory/display, Red to ignition and orange is self explanatory.

However the change that was made is that the red wire is merely use to activate the radio and the main power to drive the amps is taken from the yellow constant power wire, this was done for power and power line conditioning I am told.

What that means is if you have a 24/12 power converter and you think it is ok to hook up the yellow lead to one battery because is does not draw much power and hook the red wire to converter power you would be incorrect, and when your radio is on you are drawing all you power from one battery.

How can you tell if you have a modern era radio or the old style, several ways, if the yellow wire is a heavier gage than the red wire than you have a new one. If you disconnect the yellow wire while the radio is on and you lose the sound as well as the display you have a new one.

What do I do if I have a new radio and do not want to run a load/balancer converter. I have hooked up several of these radios and what I have done is create a small relay circuit that leaves the yellow wire power on one battery if the radio is powered off, and switches it to main converter power when the power is on.

Hope this helps a few out there

Cheers,

Michael

 

[Red Herring]

Why not save the headaches and get one of those Solar converters to begin with? If you are going to run into trouble with a radio, then won't other add on accessories also give you grief?

 

[Stone]

I knew that about the new radios, Mike...and the large gauge memory wire gives that away.

In a 24v system, you should not have ANY taps off of the low side battery at all. Get a step down converter and run all of the 12v accessories off of that, and a relay for switched power. If anyone is unsure about how exactly to set that up, then they should get someone to do it properly to save them the headaches.