Radio Sat Nav Parasitic drain problem

[Tony70]

Okay so had the car a couple of months and really liking it. One issue recently was the battery draining overnight. Recharged it and it worked well for a bit. Long story short it had a parasitic drain test and it appears that the radio Sat Nav unit is the wrong one for the car and that is what is draining the battery. Previous owner upgraded from the original radio unit. Garage suggested refitting the original radio unit part which I don't want to do for £400 pound because the present unit has radio, cd, SD card and sat nav. For the time being I have had new battery and relay fitted and disconnected the unit until I come up with a solution, cheaper solution that is. After further clarification from the Garage I will reconnect and then do some readings to see how much we are losing overnight. Garage reckons 0.106A. Might I be able to live with it or get away with it or will the new battery start to fail pretty quickly. Would be eternally grateful for any suggestions to help remedy this short of a new unit.

PS I have now reconnected the unit with a view to seeing how things progress. Might I get away with this by keeping battery charged or is there a way to correct the mismatch with software fixes.

On refitting the unit i have now a passenger airbag warning light error too. All suggestions and advice appreciated. The unit is the Columbus pictured.

 

 

[pab567]

It's a pity picture cannot be viewed withput logging :(

[Tony70]

My apologies Ill look into it

[J.R.]

£400 to refit a radio?

 

It sounds like you need to change the canbus control module for one with a later revision, its what I had to do when I had the same problem with an aftermarket radio.

 

Do you by any chance have a towbar fitted with a relay interface for the towing electrics? They have a not insignificant 24/7 current draw.

Edited 18 October, 2020 by J.R.

[Tony70]

Well the roses are still blooming in Picardie. Many thanks for your reply.  Do you mind if i ask how you went about doing that in your situation ?

 

A BIENTOT

 

TONY

[Tony70]

The £400 was to fit the original standard radio for the model which is just a radio basically. This was at a VAG garage. I love the Columbus in that I have radio sat nav cd SD card and phone connection including playing the phone music library. I don't have a tow bar but there is an aftermarket reverse sensor. Fairly confident though that it is the radio. 0.106 is about twice the spec and that's just the radio

[langers2k]

A 2014 Superb should easily have a new enough CAN gateway that the classic parasitic drain shouldn't be an issue.

 

Might be worth asking @Rustynuts for advice as he's the resident expert on the RNS style Columbus.

 

Otherwise, it's always worth having the car scanned with VCDS or similar for clues

[Tony70]

Thanks for that. Ok so far diagnostic, relay, new battery and parasitic drain test costing £400. This identifies the after market Columbus as the culprit. The only solution offered by garage is to fit the original factory radio unit for another £400. I'm struggling to accept there isn't some way to make the Columbus compatible with the car!

[Tony70]

The garage also identified the unit as a Columbus but to me it looks like an Amundsen unit from pictures I've seen.

[langers2k]

Feel free to add some pictures

[Rustynuts]

You'd best post a pic of the actual unit. If it's aftermarket then it will not be a Columbus, no matter what the garage tells you

[J.R.]

41 minutes ago, Tony70 said:

Well the roses are still blooming in Picardie. Many thanks for your reply.  Do you mind if i ask how you went about doing that in your situation ?

 

A BIENTOT

 

TONY

Hadn't seen your vehicle is 2014, my experience will not be relevant & I simply followed the advice on here from people like Langers & Rustynuts, you will be better off with their expert knowledge.

[Tony70]

Ok no worries I’ll certainly take your advice 

 

My unit is exactly like this one

 

 

[Rustynuts]

Again, you'd best post a pic of the actual unit.

 

There are slight differences which to the untrained eye make a big difference. Posting a picture is not something which should defeat you as you've posted a pic right there already.

[Tony70]

15 minutes ago, Rustynuts said:

You'd best post a pic of the actual unit. If it's aftermarket then it will not be a Columbus, no matter what the garage tells you

Ok will do tomorrow but it looks like the one I posted above

[Tony70]

Initially I thought the previous owner had it fitted through Skoda as the car has FMDSH and in which case there surely would not be a problem. Would the previous owner still be contactable through Autotrader?

[Tony70]

21 hours ago, Rustynuts said:

You'd best post a pic of the actual unit. If it's aftermarket then it will not be a Columbus, no matter what the garage tells you

Ok so this is the unit I’m my car. Can you identify it?

[Rustynuts]

Yeah, that's an Amundsen Plus unit. So it's something which would be fitted to cars of that age perhaps, but possibly not to your particular model. It shouldn't be causing any battery drain unless someone has been doing something silly. 

 

One thing that does puzzle me. You made mention of fitting a new relay, can you explain what this was please?

[rover220]

Does your car have stop start and what battery was fitted by the garage? We had a user here once that was adamant that the TV tuner was causing electrical problems despite being told otherwise. 

 

Turns out they had just fitted a new battery that was not an EFB or AGM and it was causing all sorts of funky things to happen. 

 

 

[Racataian]

If your car consumes 105mA, this means in 10hs the battery is drained of 1.05A. I think the regular battery for this car hold aprox. 75A(maybe less) and you can only use about 25A of them, bellow 50A, your car will no longer start(especially now that is cold outside) and the battery will be damaged. 

So I estimate that if you let your car sit for aprox. 10 days, you will not be able to crank it, assuming you have now a new battery.  The whole car consumption would need to be bellow 20mA from what I know.

 

The fact that your radio is consuming this current means that it can not go into sleep mode so either some internal condition is to blame or the Gateway is keeping it in high power.

As internal conditions: have you tried to read the errors from the radio unit, does the VCDS sees the unit correctly?

 

I do not know how the unit looks like on the back but I would disconnect the CAN and see if in stand alone, the current consumption drops. I would let only the power lines to the unit. Could you do a picture with the unit from the back?

 

[Tony70]

Thanks everyone for your advice.

The relay was a fault connected to ECM/PCM.

The correct battery was fitted.

The back has the main connector the GPS lead and two antennae. 

I'm not qualified to do more than just take out the radio check connections and put it back.

Where would be the best place to take the car for further investigations. I've kind of lost confidence in the usual VAG specialist I use.

After a few days with the unit  reconnected  the battery is reading 12.5v