aeronautica86

This is on a 1986 944 turbo first of all

OK, symptoms: radio headunit (aftermarket, Pioneer DEH-1000 circa 1999) will not power up - press the on/off button and the display stays black, and no its not just a dead display as there is no sound as well.

So it seems like the problem has to be power or ground (or possibly the unit is just dead). Radio fuse is good, and no other electrical problems in the car btw. Also, I did remove the radio in order to take out the center console this weekend, so I think I just must have disconnected a wire or something. So what I have done up to this point is take out the headunit and unsplice all the wires that connected the headunit's harness to the factory wiring (I wrote down which wires connect to which). The two big brown (grounds I believe) wires from the factory harness were connected to the black wire of the radio's harness, and I tried pulling them apart and reconnecting them with a different connector, but that didn't work.

So I guess what I'll be doing is just reconnecting every wire...

One question - there are three main bundles of wires for the factory wiring, the smallest of which has three wires - a brown one ending in a spade connector (which is currently just dangling - maybe it needs to be connected to something?), a red w/ white stripe one (of the same gauge as the brown on with it) that ends with a plastic covered spade, and it is actually screwed to a little metal tab inside the console, and a little red w/ black stripe wire whose end was wrapped in electrical tape. So does that brown one need to be connected to something?

Any other ideas?

testarossa_td

Factory manuals should have all your answers.

aeronautica86

hadn't thought of that; but I was tired so that's my excuse, I do always seem to forget the obvious stuff

update: I reconnected all the wires in hopes that it was simply a bad connection between the factory wires and the aftermarket harness, but still no power. I opened up the headunit to see if anything was fried in there - I couldn't find anything that looked bad.

Is it possible that I could have messed up the factory wiring by pulling one of the factory wires loose from wherever they connect to deep within the car? If not, the only thing I can think of is that the headunit itself is dead, but why would pulling it out and then putting it back in kill the headunit?

any ideas?

xsboost90

brown w/ spade connector- should be the ground...although if the radio is grounded shouldnt matter. Is your antenna connected- i had a radio once that would not work until the antenna was plugged in. CHeck for power on the red/yellow wires, one constant, one switched w/ the key. If no power theres your problem.

aeronautica86

I figured that brown wire shouldn't matter as it doesn't appear to have been connected when the radio was working. I plugged the antenna wires together...maybe they weren't connected well, I'll give that a shot. I guess I'll have to go get a check light or multimeter...mine is far away, and nothing of the sort exists at my mom's house...

josephsc

924/944/968 Stereo FAQ

aeronautica86

well its not the antenna

namespace

aeronautica - my new head unit (Sony CDX350) blew after inserting/reinserting about 3 times, to get the seating right, I was stumped and pee'd off at the same time, reconnecting the orginal radio unit, it worked fine. I had a balck/yellow stripe wire w/spade, sheathed, dangling free, wasnt connected to original unit, so I left it free. what I did diagnose is the auto antenna cable (blue w/female sheathed connector - my 84 is manual power antenna, so I did not use this wire) was touching earth when I inserted the unit, this blew the logic on the head unit, no power, no nothing. a replacement unit and insulating the pwr antenna wire fixed the issue (head unit removed several times since to work on center console.)

long story short - you may have blown your head unit? have you another to test or multimeter to check voltage? when you removed console, a stray wire, that may have had bad insulation may have touched earth and shorted the system?

aeronautica86

I don't have a spare headunit to test with unfortunately, and I'll be going to get (another) multimeter here in a bit. Really this radio thing is secondary - today my main task is trying to find an exhaust shop that will weld in a new cat for me

At this point I'm guessing that you are right and the headunit is blown - if so, at least its a POS and no big loss

Dilberto

They have tons of deals on service/hardware right now. I love it. Noise-free, uninterrupted, music is hard to beat. Plus, you can hear genre of every type, 24/7. I liked it so much, I even have the same setup at home too!

Zach

aeronautica86

Sat radio...not my thing, though I appreciate the input. I listen to CDs pretty much exclusively