We wrecked in November ,hit rock that fell off hillside into road, tore up the underneath of our vehicle. Mostly damage to oil pan and part of the exhaust. Got car running today (almost)( having issues with radiator and fans not kicking on at the moment) but we charged up the battery, got exhaust and oil pan fixed and got oil and everything back into vehicle but we noticed that when we shut the vehicle off ,take keys out ,open door, the radio is staying on. You can press the knob to power off but display is still drawing power. Normally it goes dark when motor is off or door is opened after it’s off. (Also its on extremely loud and wont allow us to lower volume. We had issues with this before wreck with not being able to lower it well ,it would skip around different levels or go up while trying to turn it down it would eventually lower ,now it’s stuck on full blast won’t lower) Any help or guidance would be appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Sounds like two problems.
The volume sounds like an internal radio problem that is most easily fixed with a new radio. Radios have gotten better in the past 14 years and are not very expensive.
As for it staying powered up when you open the door, assuming that the dome light works normally when you open the door, it sounds like a problem with the body control module. That is the little box of electronics that controls various lights and buzzers and keeps your radio on until you open the door. I had one fail once. Very expensive so I got one from the junk yard and the replacement is still working fine years later. The worry is that the body control module is not working due to damage elsewhere in the electrical system. In that case, I would cut the power line to the radio and bypass the body control module so that the radio shuts off with the key. In that case, there may be other things staying on that you don’t notice, such as the air bag and antilock brake systems. It is possible that you could bypass the module with the radio wire but still have a residual battery drain.
The only relationship I can think of is that if the radio has oil filled capacitors, damaging the oil pan caused the oil to leak out of the capacitors. (Don’t take this seriously, oil filled capacitors haven’t been used in consumer products for years).
On some cars, the radio will play for a period of time and shut off after the engine is turned off or when the driver’s side door is opened. If the body was sprung when you hit the rock, I suppose it may have affected the switch and not let the radio turn off. However, since you previously had problems with the radio, I think the problems are not related. I would try pulling the fuse for the radio and see what happens.
Radios for cars usually have two power inputs, one is powered up all the time, even with the engine off and key removed, and the other is only powered up with the key in acc or on. I’m guessing either your radio is just broken (in which case it most likely cannot be repaired economically), or there’s a problem with one or both of those two power inputs.