Why is my radio always drawing power?

[cpolaris502]

The probelm started a few nights ago, i drove home from my friends house, get home, get out of car, everything is off. I didnt leave the dome light on or anything, and i took the face of my deck off.. The next morning my battery is dead. So i jumped it and it worked fine after that. I went to school and came out afterwards and it was dead again. The same thing has been happening for a few days. Last night i finally had time to look at everything, and using a test light and pulling different fuses i found out that it was my radio. When i unplug my radio the test light didnt go on. My method with the test light was like this: Unhook the pos. cable on battery and use the test light between the battery terminal and the cable to complete the circuit. When i did this the light would go on for a second and then die, when i unplugged the radio it didnt do this. then i disconnected my amp but it made no difference. So bottom line is my radio is drawing constant power and killing my battery. What could it be? All of my wiring is correct.

[CivicSpoon]

All radios draw constant power, that's how they save your programmed radio stations. You sure it's not a bad alternator or something? I'm no car stereo guy or anything, so I could very well be wrong.

[cpolaris502]

Alternator was brand new a month ago and i know the symptoms of a bad one, i just did some further investigation and i dont think that radio is the main problem anymore. I think the reason the test light goes on for a quick second is when the capacitors in the radio are being charged. I checked the amp draw with the radio disconnected with a multimeter and it draws a constant 17.4 miliamps.

[FrodoGT]

You realize how small 17.4 milliamps is right? A AA battery could run that for a couple of days......

[Cmdridq]

Have you tried pulling the radio fuse to take it out of the loop, then see if the problem goes away?