I've spent some time searching the forum but have yet to find anyone experiencing a similar problem...

About 2 weeks ago - car battery died randomly (on a 1.5 year old battery). Recharged battery and load tested it and it tested bad. Replaced battery and a week later ran into another no start, from a slightly discharged battery.

Hooked up a meter and through some testing determined that the radio was pulling about .5 amps when the radio & car were both shut off. When I pulled the radio fuse, the draw on the battery retuned to about 15mA (normal). While troubleshooting, I could hear a very faint noise coming from the radio (almost a very slow fan or other motor noise) that immediately went away when the radio fuse was pulled.

Bose Gold system has seemingly always functioned normally (except a speaker/amp failure here and there). Have always turned the radio off when turning the car off, mainly to keep the antenna from ever going up with the cover still on the car. Radio powers down, and lowers the antenna when turned off. The CD player has never worked, but I've never been concerned with fixing that. Otherwise, cassette, AM/FM, clock, have always functioned without issue.

I've heard/read of an issue with the speaker amp relay potentially staying on after the radio was turned off, but I pulled that relay and the radio head unit was still drawing the same amount of power.

Is there another relay that could be staying on even with the radio "Off"? Could the CD player be drawing some sort of power with the radio "Off"? Is there something else in the radio that is failing to power off?

I hate to spend $400+ by sending to Dr. Don's or the other Bose shop in FL to fix something very simple, and also would prefer to keep the car stock since the other parts of the system are still functional and have been refurbished recently. A newer head unit / screen with bluetooth & car play is not out of the question, but it doesn't look quite right to me with the rest of the dash being 1990 tech.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

 

While you're sourcing the current leak, buy a battery cutoff switch for $7-8 and disconnect the battery in between uses. Otherwise you'll be buying a new battery soon or a battery charger/maintainer/tender you'll have to keep attached, or keep disconnecting the battery which is a PIA. Or just pull the fuse.

 

Thanks - right now I've got the radio fuse pulled until I've got a solution figured out. Radio is also currently pulled out of the car and torn apart, although no obvious issues are jumping out at me.

 

What settings are you using on your multimeter and how are you testing the circuits?
(need to do it just dont know how). Hope you get to the root of it.

 

I doubt it's a simple problem, probably a safe bet that the radio has a short. There is a hot lead that runs to the radio that it keeps memory and clock settings..capacitors can fail and become a short which might be the problem and also cause a low whine. If you have the radio apart see if any of the capacitors are showing like the tops are bulging.

This is an example pict.