Car Toys Redux

I wrote about buying a new radio at Car Toys and how they didn't know to follow the instructions to install it, and ended up having to change something in the wiring I didn't want or ask for. Well, they really screwed up the wiring in my VW Vanagon Syncro.

They initially wired the radio through the ignition, even when it's not wired through the ignition. All they had to do was used the existing power wires from the backup battery (Syncro's have twin batteries, one when the ignition is on and one when it's off) to the old radio.

Well, it turned out they wired it hot through the ignition all the time where it was drawing power all the time, and over the weeks, it's been draining the primary battery so that the battery was completely dead this morning.

Not even a turn of the starter, just a mush of sounds and nothing. Well, I got it towed (flatbed tow truck) to the dealer and they hooked up the diagnostics to the system to discover the radio was drawing the power from the primary battery, not the secondary one, all the time.

The removed the fuse to the radio and the drain stopped. The radio still works through the backup battery which is charged when the engine is running. VW radios aren't wired through the ignition, something they knew, or at least one technician knew who was there, but not the one who worked on the van.

I still don't know why the technician who had worked on several Vanagons and Syncros, who knew the wiring setup, and was there at the store, didn't work on it but another technician who had never worked on Vanagons/Syncro did the work. And that is what went wrong.

Their technician didn't wire it right and I'm out $223 because of their bad work, and now I have to find someone or myself to rewire the radio correctly, but I'll be damned if I'll let Car Toys near the van to do the work. I have no interest to pay for them to screw up again, even if all they have to do is undo their work and redo right. I can't trust them to do that.

So that's the followup with Car Toys. Don't go there. They might be good and do good work, but they haven't shown that with me and I'm left with bad wiring in my Vanagon Syncro, and $223 less in the checkbook.