Tape player and battery drain.

[Old Miner]

I have seen many threads regarding battery drain.

 

Here is my addition.

 

My battery conditioner suddenly started showing that the battery was not fully charged. No green light on the top of the charge indicator. Showing that the battery was discharging or not holding charge. This was on a fairly new battery, fortunately or not after a few days of investigating the problem I heard a faint clicking noise coming from under the front fairing.

 

I stripped the fairing down and found the noise coming from the tape deck which at this stage was still working. Upon disconnecting the multi-pin connecter the noise stopped and the drain stopped and the battery charged to full capacity. I left the tape deck dis-connected and have had no further problems.

 

I have since re-connected the tape deck and the drain starts again and the tape deck is now dead so I have proved beyond a doubt that even with the ignition off a bad tape player can drain the battery.

 

Hope this might be of use to someone else.

 

Neil.

[ediddy]

If you disconnect the tape player does that disconnect the port for a MP3?

[csdexter]

If you only disconnect the DIN-13 connector, no -- as the AUX port has its own cable.

[bongobobny]

Wow!! That is one oddball problem! Never heard of that one before. Good find!!

[csdexter]

Yamaha were inconsistent with the usage of the unswitched +12V line. Yes, I know Clarion made the whole system but Yamaha wrote the specs in the beginning and signed the acceptance forms in the end, so they bear full responsibility for a bad design making it to market.

 

For the CB radio, unswitched +12V is fed via a separate 3-position connector. For the amplifier/broadcast radio box, it's fed in via the MCU connector. Normally, only those two components need the unswitched line, to hold station/option memories alive when you turn ignition off.

 

How or why did the unswitched circuit make it to the C-Bus connector (the round DIN-13 thing) between the amplifier and the tape deck, I have no idea but it's a very pertinent question to ask. The tape deck has no settings to maintain so it has no need for unswitched power.

 

The problem you ran into could happen to anyone, somewhere far from home, and it wouldn't be funny anymore.

[Old Miner]

Fortunately I have a life time warranty on the bike so the dealer will hopefully put it right next week when it goes in for repair.

 

You can completely remove the tape deck and have all other sound units working but if it was fitted as standard it should work, in my opinion..

 

Neil.

Old Miner.