formula forever

First let me start off by saying i know nothing about audio. so lets get some history on my car. bought her 2 years ago. the man before me had some sound system hooked up to the car but took it all out before he sold the car to me and removed the radio. I Noticed that there were alot of wires in the trunk and he had wires running into the battery from under the hood. So what ive done so far is remove the wire that was running from the battery to the interior. I put a cheap pioneer radio in along with replacing all in car speakers. go to turn on the radio with no luck. Can anyone give me some idea of what to look for next.

lmidden

make sure everything is hooked up right. check fuses under the dash and on the back of the radio

Jk_Under

make sure your constant and switched wires aren't mixed up, i had that problem too

Also check the radio fuse, as mine was blown while my problem persisted.

calgutie

iTrader: (3)

Alright so from what I understand you got an aftermarket stereo..If so try this(which is what I did)

Rewire the stereo it worked wonders for me...In the back of the stereo youll find a bunch of wires concentrate on the black, red, and yellow

black=ground
red=hot
yellow=constant

Its fairly easy ground the black wire somewhere, wire the red wire to a fuse that supplies 12 volts when you turn on the ignition and wire the yellow to a constant 12 volts aka the battery(which is what I did) after this your all done.

formula forever

does my fuse panel look fine? it looks like im missing a radio fuse?

calgutie

iTrader: (3)

just pop one in.....hopefully that will do the trick

Ruckusz28

iTrader: (3)

you're fuse panel does not look fine. It has wires crammed into it. We used to call this ghetto-splicing at the old shop. Splice them in properly and fuse them. I takes an extra 30 seconds and you don't have to worry about your car burning down.

formula forever

Yes im still cleaning this thing up from the previous owner. He had wires running all over the place. Still un ghettoing her.

Six_Shooter

iTrader: (2)

The radio fuse is the 15 amp fuse (should be a 10) above the writing. The arrow indicates that the terminal in that location (not for a fuse BTW), is also connected to that circuit.

Some years, had these plug points, for options, many years before the 3rd gen came out radios were optional, and the plug point was retained, while being connected behind the fuse box. I have seen a couple cars that had the plug point used, because there wasn't a wire connection at the back of the fuse box, I think these were early cars though.

I's hard to tell from the picture, but is that red wire near the bottom left of the picture actually plugged into something? This may be the radio switched feed wire, even though it should be yellow. You can test for this, by using a Digital Multi Meter (DMM) set to continuity scale and connecting one probe to that wire and one to the switched lead at the back of the radio.

Was the radio harness in tact, or was it cut off? If it was in tact, I hope you used a harness adapter to install the new radio, this simplifies installation, and keeps the wiring in tact to be easier to help troubleshoot.

FWIW, OEM wire colours:

Black - ground
Orange - Constant
Yellow - Switched
Brown - Dimmer (Turns on with parking lights)
Grey - Illumination (Dims with dash lights)
Tan - Left Front +
Grey - Left Front -
Light Green - Right Front +
Dark Green - Right Front -
Brown - Left Rear +
Yellow - Left Rear -
Dark Blue - Right Rear +
Light Blue Right Rear -

As you can see some of the colours are doubled up, but have different uses, like the Yellows, Browns and Greys. This can make it difficult for a novice to add in a new stereo, if they are not familiar with this or how to test for it. This is another reason why I suggest the harness adapters for DIYers.