Radio Not Working: 1993 525i BMW, help please

[cjbranden]

I'm 19-years-old, I just got a 1993 525i BMW. Heaven. Driving on a rainy day, with a tape casset adapter, playing my ipod through it, and the radio display "1" disappeared and my sound stopped (as if the radio shut off). But, the radio kicked back on half a second later. This happened, two to three times, over a twenty-minute period. Then, it rapidly turned on and off three times so I switched the radio to FM mode using the "band" button. The FM mode worked completely fine but once I switched back to casset the radio repeatedly turned on and off two more times. I then turned the radio off using the volume dial. When I tried to turn on the radio on 5 to 10 seconds later, the radio display said CODE,which I entered off the top of my head. The radio accepted it, and turned back on only to shut off completely without turning back on. The anti-theft light blinks now contantly with no display and when the car is off, the radio clicks simultaneously. I have reset the battery and left the car at ACC or "2" MODE for an hour with no difference. help me !

[witeshark]

Seems like some connections must be loose.

[marti5]

How old is the battery???

[cjbranden]

The battery has white dots with the months of the years printed on them and also white dots with numbers 1-10 on them. The dots MA (May) and 2 are filled in with black marker, so I think the battery must have been in the car since May of 2002 making it about 6 years 5 months old.

[marti5]

Ok, That should be ok, but its worth getting it checked out, as BM's do funny things if theres not enough ampage coming from the batt and the 1st thing it will start to turn off is the radio.

Try this: disconnect the NEG terminal on the batt and leave it off for 15 minutes then put back on and see what happens.

But I still think it maybe the battery itself.

[cjbranden]

I removed the NEG connection to the battery and lightly sanded off corrosion I saw while I was at it :/. I let sit for 20 min or so and reconnected it and fired it up. The radio seemed to have no power. The anti-theft light didn't blink or click even. Also, and I don't know if this will help diagnose a problem :/, the power locks didn't work (i pushed one "lock-knob" down and the others normally automatically go down but they didn't this round) and my power seats didn't work. After 5 seconds of running the engine, both the power locks and seats worked again.

[marti5]

Its sounding like the battery is not pushing out the voltage, Take the batt off the car a give it a full charge over-night. Its no good just going on a drive around to charge it up.

[cjbranden]

Thanks for the help mate I'll give that a try.