Electrical Question

["Robert H. Hughes" <robhughes100@domain.elided>]

Harvesters,

Thanks for all the quick responses.  Here's a little more information.

The downfall of these three relays has exhibited itself in three ways:

1) Demonstrated battery drain when the ignition key is off.  This first
presented itself one morning when my battery was dead.  This was maybe a
couple of weeks after I had installed the first relay.  I verified the
current draw with a test light connected between the neg. batt. terminal
and the disconnected neg. batt. cable.  After an embarrassingly long
period of troubleshooting, I came to see that the short to ground was
located in the new relay, not the stereo (I've had somewhat similar
symptoms in the past with the stereo).

2) Shorting out the starting circuit.  After the relays have "gone bad",
if I leave them hooked up for a short time (if, for instance, I want to
run into the store and I know a few minutes drain won't seriously harm
by battery), the starter solenoid just clicks.  If I then unhook the hot
input to the relay, the starter works as normal.

3) The memory on my stereo stops working -- sort of.  As long as I keep
the memory (always hot) wire hooked up, preset stations are remembered
after the key has been off.  But the CD player for some reason always
resets to the first track of the first disc.  The memory is there --
when the stereo comes on, the display shows the last place I was
listening to, but in a second or two it resets to 1:1.  Each time I've
put in a new relay, this problem was solved until the relay "went bad."

I've been able to run the stereo by starting the truck and then reaching
over and reconnecting the hot input to the relay.  I stopped doing this
the other day, though, when my friend reached down there and said that
the switch wire (coming from the ignition switch) was really hot.  This
makes me wonder if the stereo isn't drawing juice through the switch
wire.

All this being said, I still think I have wired each of these relays
correctly.  Each has been fairly clearly marked as to Hot-in, Hot-out,
and Switch (the third relay had a separate ground).  The Hot-In comes
directly from the main terminal of the Hot Fuseblock, so is not fused.
Neither is the switch wire.

The more I think about this, the more I wonder if I haven't had a ground
problem.  My firewall is durabaked, so the two metal-bodied relays had
only the small contact area around the screw to use as ground.  Maybe my
ground on the plastic one was bad.

Any other ideas?  Sorry this is so long.

rob