My Radio Quit Working!

[95XL]

Ok, this all started a couple of months ago, every so often when I started my truck my radio wouldn't turn on, then after about 1/2 hour it would miraculously come on. I would maybe do that 2 or 3 times a month, then recently the other day, I started my truck and it didn't come on again, but it hasn't come on for over a week. BTW, it was an extremely old Alpine deck, not the stock radio. Anyways, I tried another cheap deck from my girlfriend's old car, and that one wouldn't work either. So, I brought my truck in to my Dad's work and had a guy test my alpine deck, he hooked it straight up to a car battery just to see if any power was getting to the deck, (which I had already determined it was, by using a test light before I even brought it in). Anyways, he said that the alpine deck was shot, because even though it was getting power through the wires it still wouldn't come on, and that must have been the same problem with the cheap deck from my Girlfriend's car. So, I bought a brand new Clarion deck. I brought it home and installed it straight away, went to turn it on and, lone behold, NOTHING! Now, I'd have to be an Idiot to believe that three decks could all be junk. which leads me to believe that there is something wrong with my wiring in my truck.

The Alpine deck was there when I bought the truck, and whoever installed it didn't use one of those plug-in adaptors, they cut the factory plug off and spliced in all of the wires. So, when I took the alpine out, I cut all of the wires after they had been spliced in, so all I had to do was match the universal colors. Now, there are only three wires that determine the functinality of a deck, the red one (for power), The yellow one (For Memory), and the Black one (For a Ground). Thats what the instructions for my clarion that I had just bought said anyways. It said to hook the yellow one directly to the battery, and to just screw the black one down anywhere on metal, and the red wire was the only wire that had power coming in to begin with when I used the test light. Admittedly, I didn't hook the yellow wire directly to the battery, nor did I directly ground the black wire, I hooked them both to the yellow and black wires that were already in my dash (thinking the old decks were messed up not the wiring). So, should I hook the deck up the way it says, or is something else messed up?

Also, when the guy tested my alpine, he hooked the yellow and red wires up to the positive terminal, and the black wire to the negative, and nothing happened, which leads me to believe that even if I did hook the yellow and black wires up the way the clarion says that it wouldn't work anyways.

What are your thoughts?

 

[Hardwareman]

I would go to a salvage yard and pick up another harness so you have the factory pigtail. Then I would wire it up the way it's supposed to be, and then and only then would I start trying to diagnose problems.

I'm sure you could figure it out, but it's always best to do it right the first time. Which is exactly why this problem started in the first place. I know it was'nt you and I feel bad for you, but that's what I would do.

I hate when people do that to autos. Back in the days I understand, but since like 1990 on there's no reason.



Allen