2005 Boxter CDR 24 drained battery, repair timeline.

[Tony Yiamkis]

I posted previous progress repair about this on someone else's post about a year and half ago, now i do not see the post on any search. It was in response to an owner who had CDR 24 radio stopped working, or was erratic and they replaced it and wala! found out like me that the CDR 24 (once it is replaced with a foreign unit)  has an engineered no radio code in order to boot it back up. There were numerous posts about CDR 24 problems, now today i do not see any! I wonder what happened here.  

Anyway he was directed to go to Porsche dealer to have the new radio programmed to his Boxter and the dealer failed. He then went to another farther away Porsche dealer and they programmed it in a mater of minutes, but for a cost.

My car problem started with one day my battery was dead, charged it up and two days later dead (I am retired A.S.E. master AutoTech) again. Performed parasitic drain test and found that 900ma, almost one amp, was killing the battery. Isolated it to the radio fuse and then to the radio. Sent it to Becker in New Jersey, also asked them to wire in an Aux port so i can connect my IPOD.

Weeks later they called/email me and said they shipping replacement radio to me as they could not fix the original. They did not call ahead of time or anything- which irritated me, and that they already disposed my old radio. Plugged in new radio and a light came on panel, but did not play: shipped it back to called Becker. Becker shipped it back with letter saying take car and radio to Porsche dealer to have it programmed to car computer, as there are no codes for 987 and up Porsche's. Made two week appointment at closest dealer 175 miles away. Meanwhile days later i decide to plug the radio in and see if the same panel lights came on. To my surprise there was sound, then i turned key off and on and sound came back on, and all radio modes were working like the original radio! I called Becker to inform them, but the staff person seemed like he could care less. So I do not recommend them, lots of stress for me with this issue. I still cannot believe that they would throw away my radio without contacting me, and giving me a chance to have them send it back intact. Maybe they fried it out and tried to cover their bases. I could have installed a fuse cut out or something for the radio to get me by until going another route.

On their Auxillary port install, it was junk wasted $$. The sound is mono and muffled, nothing like the crisp radio or CD player. I recommend go with a bluetooth adapter that uses a radio frequency station. I have one and it plays stereo and sounds almost as good as the radio.