Radio fuse keeps blowing

[10Blade]

I did a search and came up empty...here's my problem:

1) Driving home, radio's on, suddenly no power to radio. No warnings, no change in volume, no static, no nothing. Playing music then silence. That's fine, I think, it's likely just the fuse and I can just spend a little time listening to the pleasing sounds of my new exhaust...

2) Arrived at the grocery store (wife phoned on the way, could I pick up some wine? she asked) and checked at the left footwell fuse box. Sure enough the 10amp radio fuse was blown.

3) Stuck the 15 amp spare fuse in. For some reason my 10 amp spare was gone. Whatever. Surely this will suffice.

4) Turned the key and the fuse popped immediately. There was even a small flash of light. Crap.

5) Ok. Ok. It's probably because I currently have the footwell speaker assembly out of the car (I'm exchanging the core...it's been out for almost a week). There's probably something in the footwell where the speaker used to be. Something probably touching something else and shorting something out...or something.

6) I get home, do a detailed check in the passenger footwell. All the various
plugs are floating in the breeze. Nothing's touching anything. Nothing looks amiss.

7) I try again. Pop.

So that's where I am. I love the sound of my engine and exhaust and, oh, man, my intake, but I also like having my radio available if need be.

Any help is appreciated.

Uecker

 

[Briank]

The speaker amp power is a different feed then the power to the head unit. First thing to do is unplug the head unit and see if the fuse holds if it does then reconnect with the head unit with the CD player cable unplugged and see what happens.

 

[10Blade]

Duh. The amps have their own fuse. I guess I was hoping that the gaping hole in my passenger footwell may be a simple solution to this problem. Now, you're saying I should disconnect the power source from the headunit? What's the easiest way to do this? I am not currently using a CD player...but I have in the past. I do have that cord in the trunk. Could THAT be causing this problem?

Thanks Brian. My wife's from Wisconsin, name's Nicole, do you know her? HaHaHa!:tongue:

 

[10Blade]

Ok I'm going to need some help here. I went serching for the power source for my headunit and came up with a number of wires:

1) gray with female end (not connected to anything)
2) blue with foamy bit (still plugged into headunit...is this the CD cable?)
3) black/green with grounding eyelit. Where the hell does this go...it wasn't connected to anything when I found it.
4) Black with male end. This was plugged into the headunit on the back left side. I'm pretty sure that this is the antenna cord. I pulled it out.

HELP!

 

[Briank]

The ground wire is normally connected to the mounting screws, there could be a short in the blue CD cable, and the grey connector is the main connections and the black is the antenna.

 

[10Blade]

Brian
There's two gray wires: one with a female thing on it and one with a large bank of connectors within a plastic housing. The former, I think, is the rear window antenna wire. Thing is, it's not connected and the spot on the back of my radio where it should go has some wire bits extending from it. What the hell have I gotten into?

I've taken the whole center consol apart and removed the headunit. I tried the fuse again, like you said, and NO, it does not blow.

So now what?

And what the heck is with that rear window antenna? I opened the head unit and it doesn't seem to connect with ANYTHING on the inside. Is that normal? It's clear that I'm missing the male end of that antenna cable. Fine. But what about the lack of any connections inside the head unit?

Pandora's box, sir. I've opened something here.

 

[10Blade]

So I hooked the head unit up without the CD cord. Works fine. What the mother is going on? I'm left with an unsettling feeling. Thanks for the help BrianK.

 

[10Blade]

It took several steps and I arrived at the answer without meaning to, but here's what was going on:

One of the prior owners or perhaps a dealership spliced into one of the wires going to the motor for the antenna. I knew that becuase I had seen the red plastic splicing thing months ago when I decided to do a little mod of my own---disconnecting the antenna motor, and attaching an aftermarket antenna to the plug and then merely placing it under my trunk mat fully extended. Great reception, no long, weird antenna.

But then the plug and the attached splicing thing (and a small insulated wire that no one had felt necessary to cover) was kind of floating in the breeze so to speak. It was just a little thing; an inch or so, without obvious exposed metal...

So why would I look back there? great question. I needed a splicing thing and was going to harvest that particular one.

Why? I wanted to splice my way into the power wire going to the head unit. I planned to power it through one of the accessory sources, just like my Valentine One and completely bypass what I considered the problem: something in the factory radio power system....certainly something with which I was not going to screw.

Then it came to me: the little nub of wire could be shorting the system!

Splicing thing removed, defect taped, and voila, no popping fuse!

SO...it wasnt the 16 year old head unit, or the 16 year old wiring, or the fact that I hooked up an iPod adaptor, or even the bit about me disconnecting the antenna motor cuz I think the antenna's ugly, no, IT WAS A PRIOR OWNERS CARELESS SPLICING!

That's my story. Thanks for reading. My advice would be to look for operator errors...iatrogenic phenomena...before assuming that the fault lies in the hardware. :wink: