I bought a used 2007 Honda Accord EX Coupe used in December. Started having battery draining issues immediately; it would drain after a couple days of sitting. First time had battery tested and there was a bad cell. Replaced battery. Still draining in a couple days.

Took to dealer and they said it was the after market radio causing parasitic drain and wanted to put a factory one back in. Cost too much so I brought it home. Did some parasitic drain testing and sure enough the system was pulling 180-190mA just sitting there. With the radio fuse pulled, the parasitic drain dropped to 10-20mA.

put fuse back in and pulled the dash apart and started pulling connectors on the metra kit and the radio (metra kit 99-7803g) When I pulled the 6 pin connector from the back of the kit, the parasitic drain dropped again to 10-20mA. this connector is part of the metra kit harness. Picture of harness is here:
https://images.crutchfieldonline.com...0997803G-F.jpg

bottom left of the picture is the 6 pin connector.

In my dash, the connector looks as it is in the picture; the 3 wires with the red caps do not connect to anything. I called metra tech support and they said the 6 pin connector was for backlighting of the climate control buttons and that they had rare issues on some internal board, and they advised me to cut the yellow wire to the 6 pin connector. I did it and sure enough the parasitic drain is holding steady at 10-20mA with everything back together.

I can't find what the yellow wire does for the climate control because i can't find schematics anywhere for the harness or the metra kit. all the climate stuff works and the backlighting works...I assume the orange and orange/white wire do all the work.

now my questions:
What does the yellow wire do for the climate control?
Is it a good idea to leave this wire cut and carry on?
Is there another way to solve the parasitic drain issue?
maybe by adding an inline resistor or something?

metra said it was a rare issue, but they have seen it before...I can't find any information on it.

Thanks for the help.

 

I'm not sure about the wire either. Figure out where (or if) the yellow wire you cut connects to the factory connector and give us the wire color. We can at least tell you what is feeding the yellow wire.

 

The yellow wire is a +12vdc wire.

The tech support said it was a rare problem, but a board in the metra kit has had issues. I was hoping someone would have experienced this before or maybe had an insight into what the 12vdc did for the kit.

With the wire cut everything seems to operate just fine and now my parasitic drain is gone. Kit has backlight, climate controls work.

Just thought it quite odd that cutting that wire fixed my issue and there won't be any side effects.