Head Unit Wiring - Concern's

[Mark H]

Hope you can help out with a possible concern I seem to have with wiring the new Head Unit (Blaupunkt London 120)
Bought ISO adaptor lead and wired the ISO to existing car loom, swapped the yellow and red wires over on the ISO Lead (after reading other threads)

The Head Unit works as follows -

Can turn head unit on and off without key in ignition (Permanent Live?), functions the same as old Panasonic Radio Cassette.
Secondly as soon as the key is put in the ignition barrel the headunit switches on as long as it has been turned on previous (dont even turn the key, just putting it in the lock),

Does this normal ? Does this sound safe ??
Looking for clarification.

Mark

[bengould]

Hi,

Mine comes on when I put the key in the ignition, without turning, and doesn't go off until I take it out, rather than when I turn the engine off. I haven't tried to turn it on without the key in the ignition though, will give it a go this afternoon.

As far as it being safe, I'm sure it'll be fine as long as your aware and make sure it's 'off' when you get out of the car.
The only issue I can see is that it may drain your battery a bit quicker when the car is off. As long as you use the car fairly regularly and your battery is in good condition this won't really be much of a problem.

Ben.

[Mark H]

Ben

Thanks for the reply, reading the Handbook for the head unit it states the it turns itself off after 1 hr? So worse case isthat it will drain for a max of 1hr..

Mark

[the edmundator]

Is it a modern head unit? If so, they take a constant supply when wired up as you describe. The only way around this is to wire the live feed to a switched source. It's ok if you use the car regularly, but I've found my batteries went flat after a couple of weeks if the car wasn't used (even with good quality, new batteries).

[james butler]

i had similar issue with mine but the radio kept draining the battery because i had linked the switched live with the permanent live, so you could have the radio on all the time.
in the end i discarded all the existing wiring and put all new in and it worked much better.
there are plenty of switched lives to be found in the fuse box, just check out the faqs section of the forum.
this way when you put the key in the radio will come on, take the key out the radio will go off.
problem with this old cars is the wiring for the stereo often gets abused by previous owners messing with stuff they dont understand so you end up with a rats nest of different colored wires and scotch-locks
plus all that cable will be old especially the main live feed, i fitted an alpine stereo to mine and it used to cut out with loud music so i had to up rate the cable.
now its banging