Stereoa Amplifier Gotcha!!

[FWinNH]

OK, so I got this new 20Gb iPod and I was in my '94 540i fooling around with different electronic gadgets to allow me to listen to it through the stock stereo system. One of them is the Griffen iTrip, which is an FM transmitter that you change the frequency of by "playing" special frequency files into from the iPod itself. I was sitting in the car and switched it's frequency and over the radios speakers I hear a couple of squeeks and squacks and then silence.

Oh man!! I figured, I must have blown the stereo amp or something because it was dead quiet, no static or anything, on tuner, tape or CD. So I started digging around for fuses (found one under the back seat) and tore out the trunk liner and pulled the amp to check it out. The Bentley manual shows a fuse on the 12V input to the amp, buty I'll be damned if I could find one. Anyway, when I checked the power coming to the amp with a multimeter I got only 9V. What? So I checked around and sure enough, while I was farting around with the door open I must have drained the battery down some and the amp went into some kind of a self-protect mode and shutdown.

Well, at least I now know my battery is definitely on its last legs. It should never have drained down that fast with such a low load. Time to go battery shopping...