Hey all. I am at a total loss with this one. I hear the old monsoon systems are a nightmare to work with if you want to replace a stereo.
In a nutshell. Replaced all speakers and deck with a pioneer AVH-270bt. Got the harness for itnand color matched all wiring. System worked perfect and sounded amazing. But the next morning went to start the car and the battery was dead. I have been racking my brain as to why. Here is what I have done so far;
I have made a bypass with a 3 pole switch to bypass the E brake. But I am sure this is not the issue.
I have checked all wiring. Red(battery) to the red on stereo(battery),
Yellow(memory) to yellow on stereo(memory)

On the bypass, ground to ground terminal,
Ebrake(long green) to center
Remote(blue) to other(ac) terminal

My only conclusion is that the old monsoon amp is drawing power from somewhere. I cannot find anything online to help.

What even more strange is the old stereo (aftermarket) had no issues, it just sucked.

Anyone got any suggestions?

 

I assume that the colors you mention are for the harness adapter to the Pioneer harness. The red is ignition switched power and the yellow is battery (constant) power for those but the factory harness uses different colors. You should check that your harness adapter is correctly pinned (I've heard of some manufacturing issues where wires get cross connected). The red (switched) wire of the adapter harness should connect to the yellow wire in the black portion of the factory connector and the yellow (constant) wire in the adapter harness should connect to the orange wire in the same black factory connector.

I doubt that is the problem but it's always worth checking. I suspect that the bypass is more likely the problem. Why do you have the remote connected to the switch? If I remember correctly, most Pioneer head units only require the light green wire to be grounded. Those that require the head unit be powered on first before the parking brake ground still only need an inline switch to ground that you turn on a few moments after the HU powers up (no separate power wire needed). Some have automated that by using a relay tripped by the remote wire to send the parking brake to ground but with mixed success since the remote wire powers up before the HU has completely finished booting. There are relays with delays and electronic modules available to take care of that. Bottom line, I would eliminate the bypass switch first and then see if the problem persists.

The Monsoon amp is wired to constant power and turns on/off based on seeing audio signal on its input side. With the HU off, there should be no such signal so the amp won't draw any power. It's always possible that the HU is defective and still sending signal or introducing electrical noise into the audio signal wires causing the amp to stay on but that is somewhat unlikely. You could test for current flow at the amp with a multimeter but it wouldn't be easy since you would have to put the meter inline in the power circuit without disconnecting the harness from the amp.

 

Thanks for the reply.
I did check the power wires. I have a harness for the vehicle so I do not have to massacre the wiring. I have confirmed that red goes to red and yellow to yellow.
The bypass was needed. I tried to hook the green to straight ground and it did not work. The pioneer AVH models have a safety feature built in to sense a timed method -park brake on, off, then on to trick the system in to thinking the park brake is on at all times and get certain features to work. Only other option was to purchase a bypass online. So doing the switch method, it simulates the "timed" park brake application to get the display to work and is basically exact same as the bypass circuit I would have to purchase. I went to an audio site for pioneer to find out how to connect it. And it did work.
So I have tried disconnecting the bypass to see if I still got the drain and it did. So I can eliminate this as the culprit.

Someone suggested that it is possible that my speakers may be draining the battery and suggested switching leads. Basically said that the poles may have been reversed due to the amp.

I should add that I have replaced the front and rear speakers with 6.5 pioneers as well. Both the rear speakers had four contacts for the old monsoon speakers and there were only two on the pioneers. So I just used two (positive and negative) for each and blanked off the others. However with the old HU, this did not affect them at all or create any problems. Not sure if this would make a difference with the new HU. From what I have researched, the extra wires were just to provide load sharing for the speakers and would not affect the system any way.

One new finding is that While investigating, i heard a buzzing niose coming from the front right speaker with key out of ignition. This is a new find. But it did disapear after a few seconds. Upon further research in this sote, i read something about pinning or splicing the wires at the amp to make them a direct feed from the HU. Could this be the answer? Would this amp be draining my battery? And if so now, why did it not do it with the last aftermarket HU? Or, do you think something else?

 

Next step. Disconnected the amp. Charged battery. I will provide an update in a bit.

 

Sounds like the stock amp is staying 'on' when you switch the car off. Make sure that the blue wire from the pioneer is hooked to the amp turn on wire, pink if I remember correctly. Real simple check for your radio install is to unhook the entire head unit, and see if your current draw goes away.

Best of luck, post up additional questions if you have any.

 

There is still no need for the power supply at the switch. The timing portion of the circuit is merely that the head unit must see the "parking brake" go on after the car and HU have started up. That's why a permanent ground won't work. But switching to ground after the HU has started up will make it think that the parking brake has just been applied. If it needs to see the "parking brake" released and then applied, you do that by having the switch on (grounded) when you start the car, turn it off for a moment (parking brake released) then turn it back on again (parking brake applied). In any case, no power is needed - only ground - which makes sense because connecting the HU light green wire to the real parking brake switch would never have power.

It is not possible for speakers to drain your battery as they have no electrical connection (only audio signal). They are also not polarity sensitive other than all speakers should be connected the same way to avoid an out-of-phase condition which affects sound quality (i.e. speakers can be connected backward and as long as all of them are done the same way there will be no impact at all). Besides, the amp was always there so changing the input (new head unit) would have nothing to do with the speaker output polarity from the amp. Whoever told you that has no idea what they're talking about and should not be approached for advice in the future.

The "extra" wires are for more power. They connect to two separate voice coils on each of the speakers to basically double the power handling. Connecting only one pair won't hurt anything but it will reduce your available power.


Yes, there are people who advocate disconnecting the factory amp and splicing wires to directly feed the speakers from the head unit. In almost all cases, this is stupid. The only exception is if there is something wrong with the factory amp and you don't want to replace the factory amp or rewire for an aftermarket amp. Otherwise you are giving up power merely because somebody who doesn't know any better heard that the Monsoon system sucks. That is not the case in your situation so I wouldn't even consider it.

 

The Monsoon amp doesn't use a remote turn on wire - it turns on based on audio signal detection.

 

Thanks whitebird. Sounds like you know the system pretty good. And yes I agree about the speakers draining the battery. It should make no difference which way you have polarity. The best part is. and like I mentioned, it did not do this with the old unit and I hooked that one up also. Did not have a bypass tho. So maybe the blue wire is the issue.
The switch however, was needed. I origionally tried to hook it to ground and got no picture and could not use some of the options(greyed out in menue). But I spoke to a stereo guy and he said i did need this switch. However, not all stereo experts are "stereo experts". Lol. Maybe I just hooked it up wrong the first time, but I tried a few attempts and this seemed to be the only thing that worked. I will try everything you mentioned and hope I have better luck. If you can provide some insight on how to connect the parking brake(green wire) to bypass, maybe a website to show what I am doing wrong and where to connect it, i could get rid of the switch. That would be greatly apreciated. Like I said before, i just may have connected it wrong.
Thank you for the help. Wish me luck. I will update you when done.
Cheers.

 

And I do not want to get onto the headache of messing with the amp of I am not required.

 

I'm not saying that the switch isn't needed, just that the power (blue wire) to the switch wasn't needed. You could use a SPST (single throw) switch with the light green wire on one terminal and the other terminal going to ground without the need for the double throw switch and the blue wire power connection. Then you just toggle the switch from off to on after the head unit has powered up. The HU needs to see the change rather than just having a constant ground which is why wiring the light green wire straight to ground won't work.

But if you want to eliminate the switch, you can get this module that does it automatically:

 

Awesome. I am disconnecting the blue wire from the switch and putting everytjing back together for now so I at least have music. I just ordered this bypass module from amazon. I am going to temporarily leave the switch with green and ground wire connected until this comes in. Hopefully the battery does not drain and I pray that this is the fix. I will let you know how it goes. Thanks Whitebird.

 

Hey. So bad news. I unhooked the blue wire and ran it to the anntenna wire as per instructions. Left the green park brake wire and ground on the switch. All wires are matched to wher they are supposed to go.It has to be the amp. I don't get it. The old unit did not do this. Going to try disconnecting the amp next to see if I get the drain. This will confirm the drain is from there.

 

Certainly it is possible (perhaps even likely) that the amp is the source of the draw. The thing I would question is whether that indicates a problem with the amp or is it functioning as designed but something is keeping it turned on?

The Monsoon amp has two constant (battery) power feeds and turns itself on or off depending on whether it detects signal on its audio input connection from the head unit. Unplugging the amp could very well stop the power drain but that doesn't necessarily mean the amp is defective. If you still have the old head unit, I would suggest putting it back in to see if the power drain disappears even with the amp still connected. If the drain stops with the old head unit then that would mean that the new head unit is somehow triggering the amp to stay on when it shouldn't (perhaps noise on the audio signal wires that the amp interprets as signal). But if the drain is still there then it is probably the amp itself.

 

I had a friend do some research on the AVH units. He mentioned he read something about possibly having to reset the unit after installing. Not sure what he meant and I have never heard of this before. Basically he mentioned that from what he read, when you first install and power up, the may be a setting for a full reset. I do not think this is the case.
I guess another possibility is that I messed up the battery by letting it drain a couple of times. Either way, my next move is to bring it in to a specialist.

 

So here is a question. I am pretty sure I know the answer. I used a bolt meter to check voltage on all the wires. Here is the result;

Yellow-12 volts with key on and off
Red -12 volts only with key on but noticed a 0.03vdc reading woth key off. Hmmmm
Blue-zero volts(good sign)
Green-zero
Orange-zero

Here is the part I am wondering about. And I am sure it is because they are running from the amp. All the speaker wires are reading 4 volts with keys in or out of ignition. I am going to say this may be normal as the speakers are running from the amp. But why do they stay powered with the key off? Also, this helps explain the buzzing I heard in the speakers with the key turned off. It even made the buzzing today with the unit taken out and key off. Is this normal? If so, why? Maybe my amp is somehow drawing power. But i did not mess with the amp.

 

hey. So I have concluded, after a week of experimenting, that it is not the stereo.
i returned the stereo for a newer better one, ordered the bypass and installed it, and the battery still wentt dead.
While the stereo was out, and the harness was removed, the battery did not drain which led me to believe that it was the stereo. But now with the new stereo installed, the battery died again.
So I performed a battery test and the battery was fine.
I performed a parasitic drain tes and the meter read 0 amps(Nothing draining the battery).
My conclusion is that there is a wire grounding out in the harness but I cannot see any wires that would be causing the problem. So I guess I am going to have to do some wire chasing.
my clue so far leads to the fact that even with the stereo out, i heard buzzing in my speakers. But I am confused as to why the battery did not drain with the stereo removed even with the buzzing.
I hate electrical snags. But if anyone has input, it would possibly save me some headaches on how to find where the problem is. How to narrow down where it may be coming from.
Thanks.

 

Have you tried leaving the stereo installed but disconnecting the Monsoon amp? That would help determine if the head unit itself or the amp is draining the battery.

You should not hear any noise from the speakers with the stereo out (or even just turned off). That does seem to point to the amp but it could also be a wiring problem. Unplugging the connector at the amp should help determine that as well.

 

So yes. I unplugged my amp and battery did not drain. What puzzles me is this never happened until I installed the stereo. Even with the stereo removed, the amp is draining my battery. Not sure why. Maybe the amp is toast?

 

That seems to confirm that the source of your battery drain is the amp. But it doesn't tell you whether the amp is defective or it is turning on because it sees some kind of audio signal. One way to check that is to reinstall the original factory stereo head unit. If the battery drain is gone with the factory stereo and amp connected then you can assume that something in the new stereo or its wiring is the source of the problem (more likely wiring since you've already tried a different model stereo). If the drain remains with the old stereo connected to the amp then the amp is probably the source.

 

Apologies for the long delay in updating.
So I replaced my battery and have a fresh new battery. I have been driving the car with no stereo due to disconnecting my harness at the amp and no drain. Decided to plug the harness back in to see if there may be a possibility of a relay being reset or a bad capacitor or something. As I said, i hate electronics. But as expected, the new battery drained. This time a little longer because it was new.
so, rather than go ahead and buy a new amplifier only to have the same thing happen, i did some research to ensure I cover every possible option.
here is what I found;
since I exchanged the HU for another upgraded HU, i knew the HU was not the issue.
I did read in a forum that not all aftermarket HU's do not turn off the monsoon amp when the ignition is off. They simply do not cut off the signal used to sense the unit is off so there will be a constant source going to the amp regardless if the ignition is on or off.
I learned this from someone with the same issue who purchased a new Amp and had the same problem with the new amp.
So I have a feeling this will not be the fix. It may very well be, but it would be expensive to test this theory.
so I found a fix that would definately work. This fix eliminates the bypass method of running and jumping wires and making a huge mess and painfull hours of running wires.
i found a post on a VW forum about adding a $5.00 relay to the system so that it will automatically cut the power to the amp. This makes sense to me as whether the amp is defective or not, it is a failsafe and will work regardless. Plus, a no brainer as the relay costs $5.00 and a new amp( which may not work) costs between $50-$100. So I am going to go this route.
SO...... my next question. Is there anyone on this forum that has carried out this proceedure? Where is the best place to install the relay? I know the constant power splits in to two orange wires at the amp but aparently is split from one constant power wire further down the system. Also, aparently, i have to connect the blue wire from the HU to the relay also. Can anyone provide me some info or pics on this process. It seems to be the best and easiest option. Hope my post helps others with this problem as I have learned is actually a common one with after market HU's and monsoon amps, and any assistance in this proceedure would be greatly apreciated.