Leisure Battery and Radio

[Aethelric]

Just a word of warning here. I moved the internal lights etc to the leisure battery and was quite pleased to see that the radio had transferred too. The backlight stayed on all the time, but it seemed to take very little current. The radio was the standard japanese bongo one.

Then I fitted a new radio and now the back light went off - great. But I noticed the voltage sensing relay led flickering when I started in the morning which hadn't happened before. So I measured the current taken. The radio was taking 0.3Amps when switched off!! That would completely flatten the battery in a week.
It's not for the memory as that is on a different wire which takes under a milliamp. Anyway, I did not want to put it onto the ignition circuit as I want to be able to listen to the radio without the ignition on so I ended up fitting a supplementary on/off push button. Problem fixed as long as I remember to switch it off with the right button.

Probably not all radios are the same, but if your leisure battery seems to go flat quickly its worth looking at.

Dave

[bigdaddycain]

Cheers for the tip Dave, i accidentally left my radio on for four days once! Luckily the l/b could cope,and didn't run down...