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Your radar detector should be off when starting your car. You should turn off your radar detector before turning off your car. Turn on your radar detector a few seconds after you turn your car on. Now you don't need a resistor. Problem solved.

Do you also have laser jammer?

 

Your detector is obviously screwed up. Either send it back to Beltronics for repair/replacement, or better yet throw it away and get a V1 or Passport. It should not be drawing anything close to what you're describing. My V1 is always set to on, it just powers up with key on 12V. Never had an issue when starting the engine.

 

Passport and Beltronics are the same company. You shouldn't leave your RD on, when you turn your car off/on. The power it receives isn't clean.

 

What do you mean by not clean? And I don't understand why some of you insist on turning it off. If you hooked it up right, it should be key-on 12V. No reason to turn it off, it's only on when you have the keys in run.

Can you explain "not clean" power?

 

Well, in the first place, your RD is incorrectly hooked to the car. When the engine is cranking, most power consumers have to be disconnected, the car is supposed to do it automatically. Either yours doesn't or the RD is connected to the wrong wire.

You can still help it by using a diode and a capacitor. Put a diode in series to the +12v supply wire, then *after it* put a capacitor in parallel to the RD. Make sure you match the polarity of the capacitor to the wires.

You need at least several thousand mF capacitor. Around 5000mf is good, if you can get more, get more, but it could be pretty big in size. If you can get 1F, it's good. Don't get capacitor higher in voltage than 16v because you don't need one and it will only be bigger. I will try to draw a schematic now (ignore the dots, I need them to
keep formatting):

power +12v --------|>|---------- RD +12v
.....................................|+........... ......
...................................===..5000mf.... .
.....................................|............ .......
power gnd --------------------- RD Gnd

As for the diode, get one that can withold at least 1A of current. A white strip on the diode usually means catode (it's on the right on my schematic), but don't worry if you put it the wrong way: your RD just will not turn on, if it's the case, reverse the diode. Be careful about the capacitor though: if you use wrong polarity, it may explode. On the capacitor they usually draw minuses next to the minus terminal.

Why do you need a diode? Because when voltage drops in the supply wire as you are cranking, it will also discharge the capacitor, so it will be useless w/o a diode. Once voltage is higher at the capacitor, current will not go in the reverse direction since the diode only allows it to go in the direction from car to RD.

Enjoy!