Battery drain problem found

I have been fighting a electrical drain that has been killing my battery if it sits for 2 days or longer without running.

I have tried to find it with no results.

The amp draw with the doors locked and everything turned off was only .05 amps or 50 milliamps if I am correct.

Battery is oem and less than 1 month old.

I was getting something out of the hatch area and thought I would check to see if I had plugged the monsoon amp back in after my last series of testing and when I felt it, it was very warm. The car had been sitting for 2.5 to 3 hours.

I have an aftermarket kenwood head unit which powers the sony component front speakers but I still retain the monsoon amp for the rear speakers.

To achieve this I had to leave one of the front speakers negative wire connected to the monsoon harness as well as running it directly to the door speaker.

The monsoon amp is triggered by sensing voltage on this wire so I had to do that to get the amp to turn on with the head unit.

For some reason the monsoon amp was constantly recognizing a signal even though the radio and car were turned off, so it never turned off.

Since I have a custom box with 12" speakers and an amp in the hatch I already had a "remote tigger" wire conveiniently in the hatch.

I cut the hot wire (12v +) in the green plug going to the monsoon amp. (there are three hot wires there but about 10 inches back in the harness they become one larger wire). I used a 30 amp relay triggered by the aftermaret head units remote trigger wire and now the amp turns off with the stereo and remains turned off until the stereo turns back on.

I am planning on letting the car sit for 2 days now and I will post if it worked.

I am pretty sure that was the problem because of the amount of heat coming from th monsoon amp after it was not in use for over 2 hours and should have been cool.

Yea! Someone that actually posts the fix!!

I am having a similar issue.
Boardwalk says it is the aftermarket unit, but the symptoms sound like the same thing you have going on...except I am running all my stock speaker locations through the monsoon.

I was curious if you remembered which wire was the remote turn on - I am looking at a Bentley schematic, but not sure how to tell which one would need to be used for the remote on.
Also, you say you used a 30 amp relay? Can you elaborate? I thought the first time I read through your post that you simply carried the remote on wire from your aftermarket amp and wired it to the remote power on of the monsoon. But upon reading it again it sounds like it was a little more elaborate than I first thought.

Thanks

Full res version...
http://www.lsmsaaa.org/antoine/newbeetle/NewBeetlePDF's/vw.nb.wd-full.jpg

The diagram shows me that what you stated that the 3 red wires connect to a large red wire that connects back to a fuse and the stock head unit. But how can you tell which of the 3 wires controls the remote on function. I guess you could assume that any one of them could - since you are basically breaking the circuit?

Why didn't you just use the electric ariel wire for the remote if the head unit doesn't have a dedicated amp remote wire?

Not sure what that is...but mine does have a remote on wire...and it is wired to an amp for the sub, so like the original poster - the remote wire is there ready to be tapped into. I just don't know what wire in the monsoon to cut and attach to.

At 11pm after sitting for 3.5 hours amp was still hot...not warm, hot.

Most after market radio's need the Acc wire (switched wire) actually hooked to a switched source. A lot of people for speed and not knowing where to find a switched wire on Can-Bus cars just hook the Battery wire and the Acc wire together and that will cause a power drain. Pioneers book for the AVH P3200BT spells it out pretty good but others do not. I hooked My Acc wire to the back of Fuse 10 which allows the unit to work just like the stock one did, with the Key still in the switch but the car off the radio plays then pull the key and everything turns off.

I had this same problem and someone on here told me to switch the yellow and red wires from the stereo on the harness and it will fix it. I done this and it worked. Hook the red wire from your stereo to the yellow wire on the harness, hook the yellow wire from your stereo to the red wire on the harness and your done.

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=311940

Thanks - I will work on this on Saturday and check back with results.

The yellow wire from the HU goes to a constant 12 volt source, the red wire goes to a switched source. Every aftermarket radio I have ever seen is the same. If the Yellow wire is not hooked to a constant 12 volts every time you turn the car off you will loose your settings. There are several places to hook the red wire that are switched but I have found while it is a bit of a pain pulling the fuse box loose and taking the back off making sure you know where fuse # 10 is, strip the output side of the fuse wire and tie the Red wire in to it. This will give you full key switched output just like stock. If you want it simple hook the red wire to IIRR #75 under the relays, use your test light and make sure that it is the switched one. Are you using the after market wiring harness or did you cut the wires?

The factory monsoon amp in my 2001 golf did not have a remote trigger on wire like an aftermarket amp does. The monsoon amp is triggered on by sensing voltage on one of the front speaker wires. I believe it was left front negative but it has been a very long time and I may be wrong about which wire. The problem with some aftermarket head units it that the negative speaker wires are left in a grounded state when the head unit is turned off, this makes the monsoon amp believe it is being triggered on still and does not shut off. I found out all this by searching vortex and found a write up on the problem.

I wish I could be more help but it has been a while andI have since scrapped everything factory in my cars stereo system for a much higher end system so I do not have the same wiring to look at anymore.

Birdman said:

The yellow wire from the HU goes to a constant 12 volt source, the red wire goes to a switched source. Every aftermarket radio I have ever seen is the same. If the Yellow wire is not hooked to a constant 12 volts every time you turn the car off you will loose your settings. There are several places to hook the red wire that are switched but I have found while it is a bit of a pain pulling the fuse box loose and taking the back off making sure you know where fuse # 10 is, strip the output side of the fuse wire and tie the Red wire in to it. This will give you full key switched output just like stock. If you want it simple hook the red wire to IIRR #75 under the relays, use your test light and make sure that it is the switched one. Are you using the after market wiring harness or did you cut the wires?

Click to expand...

Aftermarket wiring harness from Crutchfield with the k-wire delete. All connections soldered.

It is keeping the memory...so I'm guessing that it probably isn't a swapped wire. I was hopeful that I would look tomorrow morning and see that the harness swapped the location of the wires and I could just reverse them...but I am getting no power when car is turned off, but all my settings are still there...well, at least it knows what the last source was - I mainly listen to satellite or through it's USB interface.

I'm pretty sure if the wires are switched the ignition live will be connected to the battery live from the car and you wont lose the memory and the memory wire only needs to be connected if you have the stereo switch off with the ignition so it stores your settings.

It is these modification that usually causes problems but VW ends up being blamed.

I will check that first then.

marvins_dad said:

I will check that first then.

Click to expand...

Wasn't that. Swapping the ignition with constant on results in loss of memory of the radio when key turns off. Also, I could kind of tell that the constant was the proper one because it was a much larger gauge red wire coming into the harness. The colors aren't matched to the harness...but that didn't matter. I was optomistic when I saw that the constant wire was red and what they labeled as constant was yellow...then the switched on the harness was red and the oem wire was yellow with a red stripe...but it just doesn't test out.

Seatman said:

I'm pretty sure if the wires are switched the ignition live will be connected to the battery live from the car and you wont lose the memory and the memory wire only needs to be connected if you have the stereo switch off with the ignition so it stores your settings.

Click to expand...

All aftermarket radios in the States that I know of use the same hookup color wires. The memory will NOT be saved if the Yellow wire is not hooked to a constant 12 volt source no matter what you do with the red wire. There use to be a time you could hook both yellow (memory) Red (Acc) together and just have to remember to turn the radio off when you got out of the car. Now me not all company's state in the manual not to hook the red acc wire to a constant 12 volt source or the battery can be drained over a few days. But then I have only been installing radios for 40 years what do I know.
Yellow = constant 12 volt
Red = Acc
Black = Ground
Blue = Amp turn on and antenna power up to 1 amp

Conclusion is that the head unit and new harness are working just fine. Key in the off position still allows the radio to stay on until the key is pulled then the radio turns off.

The amp is malfunctioning and not turning itself off when no signal is coming through the front right inputs. Turns on just fine, but sometimes turns off and sometimes stays on. I noticed after leaving work the other day that the amp was cool...but at night it always seems to stay on. Coincidence I'm sure.

So - either I get a new Monsoon...not knowing if it will have the same issue or I just go ahead and splice some wires and go with the Alpine v12 amp I have sitting in the closet. The only problem with that is that the wires are so constricted and I still want to use the factory wiring to get the current to the speakers (don't want to full with a complete rewire at this point. I can pull RCA's from the head for input and pull power and everything off the sub amp.

I really don't mind the sound of the system with the monsoon amp installed, just this little battery drain issue that kills that. I did investigate the 3 power wires coming into the amp and actually pulled the amp and pulled it's housing to see if there was anyway to figure out why 3 power leads are entering into the amp. I saw nothing that was obvious. There are 3 wires, 2 are smaller gauge and one is larger. Assuming that the largest gauge is most likely the main power for the amp I left it alone and cut one of the smaller ones to see if I could insert the remote on concept...amp still came on and worked....so I cut the other small red wire...amp still performs properly. Don't see any change in the volume or loss of any speakers. I am going to go get lunch and let the amp play to see if anything happens and see if I can get it hot enough to tell if it will shut off or not. I'm sure this is dumb, but I'm looking at replacing either the amp with a refurbished monsoon or the Alpine, so it is worth experimenting with.

Due to the awkward nature of my all in one stereo/heater combined unit I just took my live straight from the battery so avoided any vag/aftermarket stereo problems.

Alpine tend to be good stuff but if you want to keep the monsoon is it a possibility to wire in some sort of switch so you can just turn it off manually? I know it's not perfect but might do the job.

Seatman said:

Due to the awkward nature of my all in one stereo/heater combined unit I just took my live straight from the battery so avoided any vag/aftermarket stereo problems.

Alpine tend to be good stuff but if you want to keep the monsoon is it a possibility to wire in some sort of switch so you can just turn it off manually? I know it's not perfect but might do the job.

Click to expand...

LOL - yeah, I thought about that - but decided to start the V12 install yesterday...all is in, but not getting any sound - so I am in troubleshoot mode. Nothing is ever easy. LOL

In the spirit of the original post...Problem solved!

Monsoon was malfunctioning...either replace or get rid of. I opted for get rid of...now the Alpine is installed and wired into the OEM wiring - all is well.