My car is a 94 Skoda Favorit GLXIe. The current stereo is a goodmans radio cassette that chews cassettes and I intend to change. Prior to purchasing a new stereo I have decided to check that everything works correctly, as looking on manuals on the internet it seems important that the ignition switched connector works properly.

I have taken a multimeter (checking for voltage) to the car's din connector. Holding the black to the ground, I found that the constant 12v and the lighting switch work well providing the expected just above 12v values...

However, the ignition switched connector remains on, whether the ignition is on or not. Is there likely to be a fault here? I know the power can be ignition controlled as the heated rear screen and clock light only turn on when the ignition is on. Is it easily possible to wire this red cable so that it is ignition switched?

TIA

it's not a swtiched live.... it's permanent on the radio loom

I'm not an electrician, but would there be anything wrong with cutting the red cable, stripping it at the connector end (and insulating the other end) - finding a live that is only on with the ignition and cutting this turning it into a Y connector with the offshoot connected to the red cable using a terminal block? My guess is that surely not much power can be drawn through this connector as it is simply swiched power to indicate to the stereo to turn on, therefore no other electrical systems should be affected?!

All I can work out from the Haynes manual is that the ignition switched terminal is fed to the fusebox in a black cable, to some connector identified as F/5, although I cannot figure out where this is. Perhaps I'll be able to work it out using logical deduction looking at the other wiring diagrams and wire colours entering and leaving the fusebox.

I would obviously take the precaution of disconnecting the negative terminal from the battery before cutting wires

i'm not eaxactly 100% sure what you are describing

but as i read it, you want to run in a new wire and connect it up to the short bit you've cut which would normally be just used for the permanant feed on the back of the radio??

in itself, so long as any bare live wires are properly terminated and insulated to avoid short circuits, that would work... BUT most radio's require a permanant live feed for storage of radio station presets/ menu settings etc. and if it was only fed with an ignition controlled live, you would loose all of these stored settings every time you turned the ignition off

I intend to connect an ignition controlled power source to the ignition controlled connector and leave the permanent feed as it is. There are 4 connections on the connector. Permanent +ve, lights on +ve, -ve ground and what is supposed to be ignition controlled +ve but appears not to be.

I am looking at installing a new cd player and the manual strongly warns of possible battery drain if the ignition connector is not switched with the ignition.

if that +ve which you think is the switched live is a black wire, then that is the live feed to the aerial amplifer fro the radio and doesn't need to be connected to your new radio at all.

personally i would just loop a wire into the switch live terminal in the radio from the permanant live, so long as you remember to switch the radio off when you leave the car it wont drain the battery any more than if it was running of the switched live

It's A7 on here, I think it's red. I'll try without any fiddling and see if I have any problems with battery first.

http://www.service.pioneer-eur.com/peeservice/ESW003.nsf/0/30B0DA064CB70084C1257173004B257D/$file/QA_EN_ISO_Connector.pdf?OpenElement

if your not getting anything on the red wire, check the fuse

Apologies for the confusing title I changed it but forum seems to keep the old one.

There's power there. It's just not ignition switched and is constantly on. Would like to bodge it to be ignition switched if it's easy enough to do But from what you say it sounds like it shouldn't cause too much trouble left as it is so long as the stereo is turned off and face removed etc. Thx for replies