any car audio guys here?

[maliburacinfreak]

so i just put a new kenwood cd player in my cutlass. hard wired it into the factory radio harness then running an all-time hot wire to the fuse box. with the car in the ACC position or ON and not running, the radio plays perfectly. start the car, no sound. sometimes it will go into protect mode, sometimes it still plays but nothing comes from the speakers. turn the engine off and turn to the ON position, it plays fine again. i know when it goes to protect mode, its supposed to mean theres a short in the speaker wires. ive unhooked all the speakers and just hooked up one speaker right by the radio, same problem. ive added an extra ground to the radio thinking maybe it had a week ground, same problem. check all my grounds under hood, same problem. even thought about an alternator problem since thats the only difference between running and not. it was charging low so i replaced it, same problem. i took it to the car audio shop where i bought it. their installer (which has been doing this for 20 yrs) went all over the car with a multimeter and couldnt find a problem. so, thinking it must be in the stereo, they replaced it. same problem. im out of ideas and so is the installer. any help??

 

[Doober]

How's the ground for the radio? If there's a bad ground it may not be getting enough juice to power both the radio and any speakers connected to it, and while it's running something else may be trying to find a ground, causing it to act up. Try running a temporary ground wire & see if that does anything.

 

[maliburacinfreak]

How's the ground for the radio? If there's a bad ground it may not be getting enough juice to power both the radio and any speakers connected to it, and while it's running something else may be trying to find a ground, causing it to act up. Try running a temporary ground wire & see if that does anything.

ive added an extra ground to the radio thinking maybe it had a week ground, same problem.

😉

 

[maliburacinfreak]

i'll also add that the stock radio worked fine before i pulled it. wired it from the diagram that you posted on MR, Doober.

 

[Doober]

That's what I get for not reading in detail 😳 :lol:

That was the only thing I can think of so far :?

 

[midwestls]

Try running a hot and a switched wire from the fuse box to it and see if that fixes it. I'm trying to think deep into my date bank (lol laugh I know) but my 87 cutlass did that as well. I wanna think it had something to do with my illumination wire, but don't remember for sure. I do know that to fix it I just reran those two wires though.

 

[maliburacinfreak]

thats about the only thing i havent tried. illumination wire is disconnected because the new stereo didnt need it. i did try moving the all-time power wire to a different spot on the fuse box since that was about the only thing different from the stock radio. same problem. ill try rerunning that wire tomorrow.