Hi all,

I took apart my install in an effort to fix some loose wiring that was causing a speaker to cut in and out. In the process, I figured I'd hook up the illumination sense wire, that the original installer neglected to do. Naturally, now that I have it all wired up, nothing works (i.e. the player doesn't boot). Here's what I know:

• The player boots in the house, in an mlord dock, so it's not the player.
• Black is supposedly earth. The same pair of black wires are now connected as were when I took the install apart. There is continuity to the sled.
• Yellow is connected to the wire labeled battery/constant +12 V. With the ignition both off, and on, the sled sees +12 V.
• Orange is connected to the ignition sense wire. With the ignition on, the sled sees +12 V, with the ignition off, 0V.
• White is connected to the wire labeled illumination/dash light. I haven't tested voltage on it, but there is continuity from sled to the connector which fits into the auto plug part.
• Blue is connected to a pair of wires that go to the amps.
• Green is disconnected, as well as all the RCA out.
• The car's power antenna wire is currently disconnected.

That all seems to jive with the installation/user manual.

I also have a PCATs tuner. The behaviour is the same, regardless of whether the tuner module is plugged in, or not. Since the tuner module is together, I'm not sure what the long blue wire (the one coming out of the module parallel to the stalk connector, that isn't connected to the plug) is for. I think 12V? Ignition switched, or not? Does it need to be powered for the player to power up? Should I connect the power antenna wire to the same amp remote/blue wire coming from the sled? When I dismantled my install, it had been connected in such a way that if the tuner was unplugged, the player wouldn't boot. It was also connected in a way that if the antenna was disconnected, it wouldn't boot. That doesn't seem correct, so I was trying to avoid doing that now (in case I ever feel like pulling the tuner module out to sell, for example).

Any suggestions would be most welcome.

The blue wire that comes out of the tuner module is intended to be connected to your power antenna. Its main purpose is to raise and lower the kind of antenna that raises and lowers, whenever the radio is on. In other words, it allows you to listen to MP3s with the antenna down. (For example, driving through an automatic car wash while listening to "On The Run" from Dark Side of the Moon, highly recommended.) Then, when you switch to Tuner, the line goes hot and your antenna goes up. (It can also serve the purpose of supplying power to a powered antenna signal booster.)

Do not connect that tuner blue wire to your amp power blue wire. I don't know what happens if you do that, but I'll bet it'll blow a fuse or something. Maybe that's what happened. Check all your fuses, including car fuse-panel fuses and inline fuse blocks in the player wiring.

I never connected the blue wire to anything, since I didn't know what to connect it to. Now that I know, I suspect I can connect it to the wire labeled power antenna. Since my truck's antenna doesn't go up and down, it's probably for signal boost. Come to think of it, since it was never connected originally, that might explain why I never really got great reception with the tuner module.

I'll check the fuses, but I'm fairly certain that they aren't the problem, since I'm seeing power getting to the sled (by taking the player out of the sled, and testing the pins on the docking connector).

Maybe posting pictures would help a diagnosis?

It must come down to this:



That's just not right. That indicates something very wrong with the wiring. I'm guessing that the problems you're having now are because there's still something wrong, something related to that original issue you described there. I see a few possibilities here:

1. Some of the wires that are coming from your car aren't connected to the things you think they're connected to. In other words, there's something messed up in the wiring without your knowledge.

2. Something is shorting out, something out of sight, like the Amp Remote wire is chafed somewhere and it's shorting out against the car body.

3. There's a serious grounding problem, for instance, the ground wire that you're connecting to isn't actually connecting to ground, and the act of hooking up the antenna or the tuner completes the ground (through the antenna and through the tuner) so that the player works in that case. Did you also get a lot of ground loop noise?

Those are my guesses for now.

I think I'm good on this one, with the possible exception of the amp remote wires. The wiring that I've attached the loom to is all coming from the original molex connector, labeled (printed on the insulation), and confirmed with a multimeter to behave as I'd expect based on the labels.


No ground loop noise. If pulling the amp remote out of the equation fixes things, then I'll double check that wiring, and make sure it really is what I think it is. Otherwise, I'll pull the ground next, and make sure it's really, really ground.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll report back when I have some results.

Pulling the amp remote lines off didn't do anything. Disconnecting the black ground wire, and reconnecting it to bare metal in the car, however, did. Digging around in the dash a bit more, I found two more blue/black wire pairs that had been clipped. The blue wires carried +12V, and the black were 0V, so I tested the connection with one of the black wires, which also worked.

I'll still be checking the amp remote wires, to see if they really are amp remote, or if they're attempting to power the amps, or something silly like that.

Thanks for the suggestions. Hopefully this'll let me finish up this weekend.