03Aviator said:
It doesn't sound like you had a Z1 installed. This is the Z1 forum. You may have better luck finding a forum that more directly deals with the product you are working with.
Actually he doesn't specify it in this post, but he had a Z1 installed a while ago, then went back to install the add on changer. Then pick up with his story in that post.
This guy and I had been emailing here and there since he had his Z1 installed.
I emailed this to him (if anyone knows of anything else, or something else to try, please chime in here, I'm kind of stumped):
Wow you really fried something. But I'm not really sure what.
The clicking sound isn't just GM, lots of cars have that. What is happening is that it's the solenoid that is used to start the car. When you have a good battery and you crank over the car, the voltage will drop (just from all the current it takes to turn over your car). When the battery is pretty drained, you turn the key, the solenoid will click on (generally you wouldn't hear this over the engine turning over). But when the started tries to engage, the voltage drops so low that the voltage isn't enough to keep the solenoid activated and it clicks off, which now since the car isn't trying to start then there is enough voltage so it kicks back on... it's a nasty cycle.
Generally you can charge up the battery and you would be ok. Draining a battery that low is never a good idea, but I did it on my truck once. I did the same thing you did. I had the radio already installed and was installing the backup camera, so I decided to listen to the radio while I was doing it. That z1 draws 2 amps (I measured it). It drained my battery in the afternoon while I was installing the back up camera. I just put it on a charger over night and I've been fine since.
The only thing I can think of would be to try putting your old battery back in, recharge it first. You might not want to leave it in there for ever, cause it's capacity will be degraded due to draining it all the way like that. Your battery acts as a very large capacitor sucking in noise and voltage spikes and such, this new one might be slightly off. I don't know. Since it's something you changed, you might want to look at that.
If it's not the battery then you fried something in your car, it could be the regulator or some other "protection" circuit in there somewhere. Generally most cars have "protection" circuits which try to filter out all the mess the car's engine and electrical systems make. Some circuit might be blown. The other thing is, this generally only happens when the car is running. If your car is NOT running and you are getting these, then I would suggest that you pull the radio out and run it on a bench or hook it to a battery outside of your truck. Just sitting on a table, hook some stock speakers to the outputs. Just power, ground, 12V switched and speaker outs should do it. Do you get the noise like that from the radio while it's outside of the truck? Do you have amps? Could those be the cause of the noise?
You have so many variables in this, best thing to do it list them:
It's the new battery. So swap batteries.
It's the car's wiring. Take the car out of the equation and put the radio on the bench and run it.
It's the amps, take the amps out.
Etc.
Just make sure each test only tests ONE thing.
I don't envy you, noisy car systems are a real pain to nail down and nothing comes to mind why yours would be acting up. Of course dropping the voltage on the Z1 down so low that the solenoid was kicking on and off, isn't' good. I hope you didn't fry the Z1.
Good luck.