Matt Macchiarolo

Odd. My '05 Excursion has an accessory position...insert key and turn
counterclockwise, play radio and open windows to heart's content. I haven't
used it enought to know if the radio goes off after 15 minutes, but it does
have the "pull the key and radio stays on for a few minutes or when the door
is opened, whichever comes first" mode, as did my wife's now-gone '04
Freestar.

"wolfpuppy" <togrul@fuse.net> wrote in message
news:87981$43ef5607$d8442ae7$2360@FUSE.NET...
>
> "Matt Macchiarolo" <matt@nospamplease.com> wrote in message
> news:Ro2dneL0ar1z2HPeRVn-gQ@comcast.com...
>> Are you sure there is no 'accessory' position on the ignition switch?
>>
>
> When I was talking to a ford tech at a local Lincoln dealership, he was
> pretty adamant that ford discontinued that mode. I'm still not sure why.
> My best guess is, again, that ford determined that the draw was too much
> on the system and set it up to time out after a few minutes. One poster
> here says it appears to around 15 minutes, but on my navigator, I would
> bet a beer that it is less than that. Also, that could be because my
> sound system might be different, read 'draws more'.
>
> Many years ago, I owned a '67 volkswagon beetle. Had some issues, but a
> fairly good car overall. It didn't have an accessory mode either, as I
> recall. What I ended up doing was simply hard-wiring the radio straight
> to the battery power. End of problem. Of course you had to be real
> careful to remember to turn the radio off when you parked, but radios in
> that era didn't pull nearly the watts they do now, so it wasn't a huge
> problem. Try that now with a modern vehicle and you would probably give a
> computer chip a nervous breakdown and the computer brain a stroke!
>