Hi Guys,

Got stuck in some bad traffic the other day and decided to get my GPS out to find an alternative route. Plugged in the charger into my cigarette lighter and the stereo went straight off. As soon as I take the charger out the stereo comes back on, very annoying knowing where you are going but with no music or not knowing where you are going but have music. Has anyone had this problem and does anyone know how to sort it out? Thanks in advance.

 

The stereo uses 2 fuse circuits. One of them is connected to the cig lighter socket. So if something blows the fuse on the cig socket, you lose the stereo too.

But you didn't blow a fuse. Since after unplugging it worked again. All I can think of is the gps used too much juice, but not enough to blow the fuse, just enough to prevent radio from working.

That seems odd. Another possibility is someone put too high a fuse into this circuit, and gps used too much (charger is bad, etc) which should have blown fuse but did not. That would be BAD. So check the fuse size asap.

 

Checked the fuses, all ok there. I managed to get both working the other day by plugging the charger into the socket before turning the car on and this seemed to solve it, I could take the charger out and put it back in again and everything was ok. But I tried again today and the stereo went off At a bit of a loss with what to do next but think I'm going to have a look at the stereo earthing.

 

I've read it's the accessory relay I believe?

 

Can you shed some more light on that? I.e how do I fix it?

 

Problem is caused by dirty contacts on the "load shedding relay".

It's a grey relay located under the dash.

Easiest fix is to pull the relay, pop the relay cap off, then clean the contacts