Whats killing my system? HELP!!!
 

Okay, so Ive had the sound system in the car for the past cuple years now, no problem. Just recently I took the sub box (with the amp and capacitor) out for a few days while doing work on the car. When I put it back in, everything seemed fine, until we tried starting the car the next day and it was dead. We had believed it to be the capacitor, my gf had seen the leds on even after the car was off. I bought a new capacitor and installed it, and the next day after that, the battery was dead. When I installed the new capacitor I watched and took note that the caps display did turn off when the car was off, but the amps led indicator was still on. How is this possible? Ithought the amp wouldnt get power if the cap is turned off? Im really confused so anything would help. I doublechecked the wiring and nothing was miswired. Id say the amp is bad but hw would it get power if the cap was supposedly turned off?

Disconnect the main power supply to your system and see if you still get an overnight drain. If so, do a parasitic draw test before and after the cap (turned off) to see if the cap is still drawing power or if its an amp. The capacitor itself is just a storage device that shouldn't draw an excessive amount of power once it's been charged- so i'd likely suspect the amplifier.

JJ

Well we had the system unplugged for a few days while waiting for the capacitor to arrive. The original cap overnight killed the battery, so I disconnected the system power wire for about a week until I installed the new cap, which again killed the battery. So without the sound system hooked up, we had no problem with the battery. I guess if the cap wasnt the problem then youre right it has to be the amp.

How about just removing the capacitor from the power supply just to eliminate it as a potential cause. A parasitic draw test can still isolate the problem- but this can only be done with a DVOM. If you don't have one handy- removing the cap and then removing the amp one at a time will isolate the cause of drain.

JJ

Thats not a bad idea, since we know its definitely the sound system, just not positive where. When we have a day that I can do so I will hook up the capacitor and leave the amp unpowered and see if it draws the battery.