remmie

That was discussed earlier, and was my original plan. Easier said than done for someone with no experience. I didn't feel comfortable going through the firewall.

I'm not worried about that one iota, but someone else might find it problematic. I'm a music freak and only leave the house if I have the right CD to sing to, even if I'm only going 5 min up the road. So remembering to turn off the deck is as easy as remembering to turn off the motor before getting out.

remmie

A final note for anyone in the future who does what I did... a few days after I re-wired everything I was reading the manual that came with my CD deck, and noticed it said that it should only be connected to the ACC wire, because connecting it to a power wire might cause battery drain. The deck can connect to lots of extraneous devices (DVD player, iPod, amp, SW...) and I don't have it attached to anything, so I figured, eh. How much can the drain be when it isn't attached to anything AND I have a solar trickle charger going. Flash forward 2 weeks later, and today I ran out to use the truck and it was dead. Last time I drove it was a few days ago. So it must have been gradually losing juice all along, and too much for the trickle charger to compensate for, cause I have been driving it every few days since I re-wired it, but only short, around-town trips that probably use more juice than they generate.

So I re-wired the old cig lighter wire (that also provides radio power) to an ACC wire at the fuse box. The moral of the story... read your CD deck manual before you wire the radio to use a constant power source. And from now on, when I buy a deck I'm going to look for one that does not cause drain. "In the old days" the decks were always powered to a hot wire and never caused drain! Using ACC for the radio sucks!