Should I connect new stereo to auxiliary battery

I would!
My stereo is connected to my main battery and I am forever getting up and checking it to make sure I havent drained it. I ll be swapping mine over to the auxillary battery soon.
Also I cant see a problem with joining those two wires you suggested as long as they are fused.

Cheers

No reason why you shouldn't wire it direct to the battery, however I'm not sure why you wouldn't just rewire as per the original off the Acc on the ignition. At least that way when its time to turn in for the night and you shut down the vehicle, you can be sure everything, bar perhaps the fridge, is isloated with no unpleasant surprises in the morning.

It will also be drawing power from the battery of your choosing rather than a single source depending on your battery set up.

As to the two wires, power and auxilliary, it will be fine to connect both to a positive. The auxillary is to obviopusly allow power to switch the unit on and off whilst the red provides the actual running power for the unit and also maintains all the station, volume etc etc presets that you have programmed into the unit. As per usual they should incorporate a fuse in the line.

I am a great believer in being able to totally isolate the battery supply from any or all things that require electical power. If then an appliance shorts, fuses fail, battery has a meltdown etc etc and an electrical fire gets under way, there a few chances of terminating the feed if you are surrounded by flames. I have seen a vehicle go up like this with the battery providing the current to fuel a faulty installation. What we forget is that once the insulation is melted off the wiring, fused or not, those wires can contact the body finding an earth and then all hell breaks loose.

Hope this helps.

Just put a simple switch on the dash to turn off the power to the red wire which goes to aux battery.
Done this for years without problem on troopie & able to use stereo without leaving keys in ignition - safety/security issue?

Rick troopie

What brand of Radio is it, I got one with USB and a SD card slot , "US Audio" and it is real handy for playing MP3s and WMAs but just the last 3 days it keeps shutting down , I rewired it from a different source and a new earth but same thing this morning it went for about 3 minutes and off it went and could not get it on again so it's in for a warranty .As for using the 2nd battery well it won't shut down every time you start the car, just have to turn it of manually

Yeah great idea, I did that with mine. Most people don't realise but a reasonable stereo can draw more than your fridge! Mine _Affordable_Storage_Drawers.aspx about 5-6 amps when it's turned up at a reasonable volume. Enough to flattern your starter quite easily if you leave it going all day.

Yes, you can connect both the power wires together no problem.

What I did to get "the best of both worlds" was connected the Direct Battery connection to the auxilary battery (so it runs off the aux all the time) but still connected the ignition power to the normal ignition connection. I just run it through a two way switch first so I can run it like a normal stereo round town, but at the flick of a switch it runs without the keys in the ignition off the aux. Simple as to do and well worth it IMHO.

Rick
I had a look at the radio webpage and yeh it looks better than mine with the colors, mine is just a vert pale grey and damn impossible to read with too much light on it ,It will do until a better brand comes available as soon they will all be putting USB and SD slots on or people won't buy a radio without, After owning one I would'nt, was told yesterday that JVC is coming but does not have SD card and i like the SDcard better than USB as it don't protrude so much.