Thread: my stereo stays on when car is off.

Hey guys,

I purchased a 400 watt ac converter, and for some reason it didn't work in my cigar lighter, they also come with booster cable hookups to attach it to your battery. not wanting to have an extension cord going from my hood to the inside, i decided to wire the power wire of the converter to my stereo (red wire) so it worked only when the key is on. and i wired the ground to my stereo's ground (black wire). the converter turned on ok, but when i plugged in my bass amplifier the power dropped and my bass amplifier turned off. and the converter stopped working only showing an error message. obviously i should of wired it direct and not alongside my stereo.

so, i need to wire the power somewhere else so i unhooked everything i did, the problem is my stereo stays on now, also the red wire that i spoke of is wired into a pac chime device. to make things even more complicated.

where do i start to fix this problem, it only started after that power drop. my stereo stays on when i remove the key and open the door now, the red wire always has power for some reason now. what would suddenly cause that wire to get constant power? i beleive its only supposed to get power when you put your car in acc.

any suggestions?

Sounds like you put too big of a load on the circuit and you fried something inside the pac harness. I think audio circuit has a 10amp fuse. It doesn't mean that the PAC can handle 10 amps though. Voltage drop isn't good. It means you exceeded the fuse or the PAC harness. Since the radio still works but it acts weird seems like something shorted out inside the PAC.

Lesson learned I hope

You kinda wired it up like "newbie 001", this is how many of us learn the "how not to do wiring" of stuff.

Sorry, but you might need to send stuff out to be repaired. One thing I'd try first is unhooking the battery connections for the pac/whole car and let it sit overnight. And read the owners manual on everything you have. If there's any kind of circuitry reset, maybe you find it or the unhook resets it.

You could install a simple toggle switch to that wire so you can turn the red "constant" power wire on and off whenever you choose too.

I would rather do that then buy a hundred dollar part.

Yep...inverters draw too much current. Even if you use the 12v plug for your cigarette lighter, it will usually blow a fuse. I would wire the radio to your switched 12v ignition line. Or see if you can add a circuit to a switch 12v fuse. I dont remember if the 04+'s have a switched fuse though.