Has anyone ever had a problem with their RCA converter causing a significant power drain from the battery at idle? My car battery has been dying lately and I think I've pin-pointed it to the RCA converter used to tap the Bose rear speaker wires to my amp. Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

I've not seen this in 19 years in car audio.

How have you "pinpointed" this?

If you pull the Bose amp fuse does the problem go away?

You need a digital multimeter doing current draw testing.

 

Well, this has basically been an on-going problem with my car (the battery dying). And at first I thought it was because I just had a bad battery (even though I had already had the car for a couple months), so I bought a new battery. To no avail, the battery was still being drained. So I thought it may have been the aftermarket alarm (even though I also had it on for over a month), and I took the fuse out of that and the car would still die. So I thought it may have been my sub/amp setup (which I should've figured out in the first place considering this whole problem occurred about a week or two after the sub/amp was installed). So I took the fuse running to the amp out and thought this would do the trick, but also to no avail, the battery kept dying. I also took my car to Infiniti Service to have them run an electrical diagnostic, and they said everything was ok. So, my only other option was that it has to do with the wiring from the RCA converter. Maybe something is short, I don't know. But it's become real frustrating, as I find myself recharging my battery everyday.

 

OK, here's the best thing to do: explain to the shop that installed your alarm that your battery keeps going dead. Tell them you need their help. This might cost you a little shop time, but they should have a digital multi meter. If they pull the (-) terminal and run the ground for the battery through the meter, and set it to current in milliamps, you can see what the drain is. Then you can disconnect and reconnect different things to see what is pulling current.

If there isn't much current draw, it's a charging thing, not a drain thing.

 

Yeah, they did that...for free actually...he first ran a current meter with the alarm installed and said that there was a significant draw and that he's going to try to test it without the alarm (i.e. pulled the fuse out) and still noticed a significant draw. So it obviously isn't the alarm, which I didn't think it was in the first place considering I had the alarm long enough to know if it was doing anything to my car. I have a multimeter myself and just checked the battery voltage. In 1 days time (just sitting in my garage, with the alarm disconnected), it drained all the way down to ~6V.

 

Don't care about voltage. Care about amp draw. I KNOW it wasn't the alarm. But it was the best way to get everything hooked up to do more testing.

Putting a voltmeter cross the terminals is not that helpful from a current draw pov. If your meter does current, then disconnect the (-) terminal and put the mtere in series with your battery. Then start disconnecting things.

Unless you have an Audiocontrol LC6, your stepdown converter doesn't even ahve a power wire on it. SO it'snot causing your issue...

 

Voltage is important, cause anything below 11 and your car won't crank. Well since voltage and current are both two parts of the "big" equation, I guess they both matter equally...

Why not just disconnect the RCA thingy... Or pull fuses in the box till your current draw drops... Then you'll know what part of the car at least...

 

I could have said it differently. It's very hard to get dependable results depending on voltage readings. It's far easier to use current draw readings.

I've seen old-school GM mechs try to do voltage t-shooting. It's often wrong.