2004 Silverado battery drain: Radio. solution found

[PickUPS]

The battery in my 2004 Silverado has been losing charge when parked for more than a few days. It started a couple years ago. I got some relief by pulling out a fuse associated with the radio, but it was still draining down.

 

I was out of ideas and ready to take the truck in to the local dealer (an expensive proposition) when I found a topic here at GM trucks.com that set me on track to solve my problem myself. I wanted to post my experience in that same topic but have been unable to relocate it. Also, I think this fix rates it's own topic with several topic-tags so it might help others with the same issue.

 

The stock radio has two separate power leads, at least. One of the hot wires to the radio is only powered when the key is on. The other hot lead to the stock radio is powered all the time (ignition-on or ignition-off). You can tell that the radio has power being sent to it while the key is off because you can EJECT a music CD from the radio without a key in the ignition at all. The CD eject action is electrical, not plain-old spring-loaded mechanical. The eject action makes an electrical/mechanical sound when it ejects a CD. It also makes a trying-sound when there is no CD in the player. However, it makes no sound when there is a CD stuck in there, even though it is trying to eject it and drawing power from your battery constantly. It quietly continues to try to eject the stuck CD even if the EJECT button hasn't been pressed for months or years.

 

My dead battery problems didn't start on the same day that I got a CD stuck in the head-unit. Not even the same week or month. I used to drive it every day back then, so it never went low enough to not start. By the time I switched to only driving it on weekends and started to need a jump-start, the stuck CD was not even considered as a possible cause of the parasitic drain. If I hadn't read it here somewhere I never would have guessed that that was the root of the problem.

 

The right way to remove a stuck CD is to pull the head-unit out of the dash, remove the top panel of the radio and use a screwdriver to actuate the eject-release mech so the CD slides right back out the front slot. An auto mechanic friend of mine told me to do this instead of trying to coax it out the slot with prying tools. Pulling the radio out of the dash is far easier than it sounds.

 

-Pull the front face off the dash by lowering the tilt-wheel all the way down, putting the shift lever all the way down to Low1 (put on your parking brake), grab the front face plastic and pull from the corners first, take special care to guide it up from around the steering column.

 

-Remove the screws on either side of the radio that hold it to the front face of the sub-dash.

 

-Pull the radio out far enough to unplug the single wire-bundle plug. It has a release button on top that must be pressed to unplug. The wires are not long so you have to jiggle an fiddle to get it out enough to get your hand behind it to release the plug.

 

-Unplug the antennae wire.

 

Now that the radio is free, pry the top off on the rear and sides. The front edge of the top panel comes off last. Ignore the thick plate of aluminum on one side. It won't interfere with removal or re-installation of the top panel.

 

The eject mechanism is actuated by pulling a plastic piece on the inside face of one of the radio's sides. Just gently work the spring loaded action that is associated with the diagonal lever that resides over the top of the CD. Once I got the CD freed from the grip of the motor-drive, I slid it out the slot manually. Then I worked the mechanism back and forth several times to simulate a CD being loaded and ejected cleanly. I did this to make sure any sensors or switches found there way back to a neutral position after being stuck for so long.

 

Slap it all back together in reverse order...