car aerial, grounding the headunit.

hi fella's ,

i recently had headunit probs , and tracked it down to a bad ignition harness. which i have replaced. ( today )

everything now works as it should, no problem there. although there is something that has me bothered a bit.

after having a bad ignition harness, my battery kept dying as the headunit was taking too much power.

i.e - i could switch on and off the unit without the key in the ignition ( wasnt able to before ) and it was draining the battery

after a period of 3 days i couldnt actually start the car.

today, i cut into my ground wire on the headunits wiring loom , and added a switch so i could kill the current when i wanted to. ( longterm parking in airport = dead battery )

by adding the killswitch, i could just flick the switch , stop the stereo from consuming precious amps , and i'd be able to start my car.

anyways, i added this switch because im still paranoid about the battery going flat , even though the ignition harness has been fixed.

better safe than sorry.

anyways, i connected everything up , speaker and power were fine, connected my rca cables - front, sub, rear and also

connected the remote switch for the 2 amps so they'd power up once the headunit was switched on. i then connected the car aerial to the headunit.

this is where i noticed that my killswitch didnt work, regardless of the position, ( on or off ) the stereo was remaining powered up and working.

i figured out that the car aerial connection is providing a seperate ground to the headunit.

so even if i never connected the ground wire on the pioneer harness, my headunit would still work due to the aerial providing the ground.

i just want to know is this a fault? should my aerial provide a ground to the headunit ?

it basically voids my idea of having a killswitch in the first place. i could drive around and just use the cd player, but i'd like the radio to

be in use also.

any comments, questions, or anything else is greatly appreciated. i have an nct ( car test , ireland ) in the next few days and i'd like the car to be ready

as they'd think something was wrong with it if i didnt have the stereo fitted.

thanks.

hi bud, thanks for the reply  :)

this pic is just to give a better understanding of what im at :

ford escort mk7 , euro model , year 2000.

i undertand what your saying, i really should have tapped into the yellow wire first.

but i went with the ground, as this stops all current from flowing. never thought that the aerial connection was grounded :(

anyways :

i opened up my aerial connection. i found that the connector has raised sections which make contact with the bare metal of the roof.

searching my shed, i found a rubber washer.

i then put a rubber washer over the contacts, and tightened up the connection again.

is this ok to do?

does the radio connection really need to be grounded ?

the killswitch works perfectly now, and ive noticed that i dont get any clicking noise when i put up the volume.

( if i turned the knob up , each time it'd 'click' or make a 'pop' noise )

i also dont get much hiss from the radio stations. it was worse before-hand. in fact, the stereo never sounded better or cleaner.

even the cd player has improved , especially the bass. 

cheers for the reply and thanks for future posts  :)