Radar detector causing car to die?

[HeyItsSkeero]

So I bought a radar detector from Wal-Mart, it was returned but it was the only one that they had.

The day after my car started running funny. I thought the car had bad gas - drained the tank got new gas. I thought the car jumped time - new timing belt. The car still didn't want to start, so I replaced the coil also. The car started and sounded good. We put the car all back together plug the radar detector in and take off, and every time you hit vtec the car smokes. So from there I let my friend drive, and I'm following him and all of a sudden I hear a loud pop (back firing lol) and a cloud of black smoke, so we push the car into a place. We head towards work because we didn't have time to wait on AAA, we put my radar into his car, on the way back the cars power just completely shut off driving. So we have to push it too, then it didn't want to start. It was doing the same shit my car did when I thought I had bad gas. We plug an OBD2 scanner into it and then the car would start for some reason, the second you unplug it the car dies. So we unplugged the battery start driving it, and then 5 minutes later it did the same shit. So we unplug the battery for about 10 minutes and it started running again, but it didn't run the same it was a little funky. We tried the same thing on my car and it didn't do jack shit. Also I borrowed my step moms car, and after using my radar detector in it, the speedo quit working... lol.

Can any body explain what could possibly be going on with my car? :/ Or any word of advice on handling the situation with cobra? Thanks.

[Stuntman G]

Maybe there is a reason it was returned before.

Radar detectors don't do anything anyway. I had a $120 Cobra in my eg. I was going down the road and I see a cop a 1/2 mile ahead, who is obviously sitting there clocking people. I roll past the cop, looking back and forth between his radar gun and my ever-silent radar 'detector'. Not a single peep. Every ticket I have ever gotten, cop was using a laser gun. It's nearly impossible to detect a 40mm wide band of light, especially when they are trained to point it at your front bumper (where it's highly unlikely that your detector is mounted).

[noridetoolow]

I cant see a radar detector doing anything mentioned in your thread. At best it might drain the battery overnight but then ONLY if you already have a weak battery and the detector stays on 24/7. A weak battery can fo sho cause a car to run like crap and do weird things!

Sounds like that thing is freakin cursed, I'd burn it and offer up sacrifices or something! lol

[Batlground]

I would think it would blow a fuse if its shorting out the circuit. The only other thing it can be is interference that would be causing the cam/crank pickups in the distributor to mess up. Thats a long shot though.