salvo24

Okay, so bare with me for this long story and hopefully i can get some input before i drop more money...so I recently tried to put an RCA cable to the back of my radio to run my mp3 player on, and for some reason, when i pulled my radio, i blew a fuse (which i didn't know). I tried for days to try to fix it, but I couldn't figure out where I was losing power after plugging my plug into the back of my radio.

I went to an audio shop today to get it fixed, and they told me to buy a new harness, i bought one and hooked it all up, and of course it didn't work.

I took it back and had them trouble shoot the problem. They said that it was indeed a fuse on the passenger side, they replaced it and also re-wired my harnesses and got the radio working. $125 later, my radio finally worked again, but to save $50, I had them keep my dash apart.

I get home with my radio still working, plug everything back in and get my subwoofers and mp3 player working just to double check, and then i start to put everything back together.......radio continued to work....until i put the last piece of the dash back, which was the fuse panel cover on the drivers side, and then it shit the bed again. i checked all my fuses, drivers side, passenger side, and under the hood and all are good...

Does anyone have any ideas on where the electrical problems may be? I am very tempted to bring it in and just tell them to install everything, but I hate the fact of paying close to $200 to fix a stupid problem when I installed my radio, amp, subs, and speakers myself....

newperson

iTrader: (2)

Ask them what fuse they replaced. Are all wires in the back of your radio connected to the harness? If not, make sure any unused wires aren't bare (I usually just throw a little electric tape on unused wires).

Also try wiring up the HU directly to the battery. On my old car, the power supplied by the stock wires was very unreliable, I ended wiring my HU directly to the battery & creating a separate ground for the the ground wire. I forget which is which (between yellow/red wires on HUs) but one of 'em I had connected to the battery. The other I had wired a relay which relayed battery power in Accesory mode ("switched" or whatever they call it nowadays).

If you wire the HU directly to the battery and the problem ceases to exist, I would say get your stock wires looked at/cleaned/etc...but I would just use my own wiring if that happened.

Do you have amps hooked up? The remote-turn on lead from the HU can be a small gauge but the more devices you have daisy-chained, the more current that'll be pulled. Some HUs don't like to source a lot of current on the remote turn-on...in that case, you need a relay.

What are harnesses like these days? I never used one (because I'm so cheap). All you need are the pin-outs of the stock connector and then just grab some headers & do some soldering. I don't know if your harness is an actual problem unless it isn't the correct one for the vehicle and has HU wires going where they shouldn't.

PS: If you are, don't eyeball fuses to establish if they're functioning properly...you should measure continuity as a real test. I've come across a few instances where a fuse looked fine/seemed no broken connection, but after measuring resistance, it was hi-z and sometimes only intermittently.

salvo24

I've checked the fuse they told me that blew this time around, I switched it out with one of the power window fuses, the radio still didn't work and the window did work. The shop hooked me up for free and undid the work i did to the harness and resoldered them and put wire caps on them (apparently my solder job and electrical tape wasn't up to their standards lol), so I know there should be nothing wrong with the harness.

I'm mainly real frustrated at the fact that everything was working perfectly until I put everything back together and it shorted out. The only electrical things other than the radio i played with was grounding my fog light wire, which isn't even connected anywhere near the radio wires. But seeing how I've gone a week unable to drive with music and about ready to drive into a tree from bordem, I think I'm going to go back tomorrow and have the fix it again (which they told me they warrantied, and just suck it up and drop an extra $50 to have the "install" the radio and put my dash back together.

It still just ceases to amaze me at how such a simple job like this could get so frustrating. I'm no expert on car audio, but I know the basics and I am at a complete dead end...really sucks I'm essentially dropping $150 just to get an RCA cable run to listen to my mp3 player in my car lol



Oh and to answer your harness question.......basically, i have one male end that clips into the factory harness and leads to all bare wires, those bare wires I soldered to other wires which lead to my clarion clip that plugs into my head unit. Like I said before, my harness was double checked by the shop, and obviously redone to have better connections. Which can only mean there is a short somewhere in the factory harness..............but then again, why would the short not cause the fuse to blow..........as the fuse visually appeared to be intact and also worked in place of another fuse. The only radio fuse is located on the passenger side fuse panel, top right, 20amps....am I correct? It says its the radio/cig lighter....and my cig lighters also do not work.

totaledTL

Maybe reference the schematic for your car (there were links to the diagrams on here somewhere) and work backward from your HU connection to see where you're losing power. Is whichever lead that is supposed to supply ign. sense to the HU working in addition to the +12v main power? You might get more responses if you post this in the audio section.

fsttyms1

There are 2 radio fuses. If you have a short, go over all wires in that area, maybe one has a cut in the shield that is causing it.

phee

iTrader: (5)

check the fuses behind the head unit as well

salvo24

Thanks for all the suggestions, but this issue continues to baffle me. I woke up this morning to take my car back into the shop and couldn't get my car out of park. This issue occurred a few days ago too while I had my dash apart and I found a blown fuse for my brake lights. I replaced it once and obviously it fixed that issue, but my radio was still not working. I made a pit stop to autozone today to pick up some more 7.5A fuses to fix the shift issue, popped the new fuse in, started my car up and for some reason, my radio then decided to turn on. So I went home and put my car back together checking my radio after each step and by some act of god got it all put back together and the radio is now working as it should.

I still have no idea what the issue was, maybe these two fuses run in parallel or something, but whatever, i'm just happy everything is working again.

kennedyhuynh

As long as it's working now, that's what matters, but understanding what happened can be tricky. It's like your car has a mind of it's own. One day it's in the mood, and the next it isn't. I spent 18 hours figuring trying to figure out my radio, and what connection i was having trouble with. Turns out that the new radio i bought, was already broken when i bought it. Glad to hear she finally decided to work.

newperson

iTrader: (2)

However, understanding what happened could be the deciding factor on whether or not the problem will occur in the future. To me, that's more important; otherwise it could stop working tomorrow and then you're in that same boat again.

totaledTL

Things seldom fix themselves.