I was going to post this in the audio section, but there never seems to be any 1st gen people in there. But anyway. I am absolutely baffled by this. I followed the diagram on my cd player instructions and made sure to match the wires on the head unit to the correct wires on the harness. However, 2 of the wires on the harness had to be switched. The acc12v and the blue one, I think it was the power ant. Yellow wire went to 4v constant. I ran new speaker wire so I wouldn't have to worry about Mazda's crazy wiring technique. At first we were having an issue with finding a good ground so as a temporary solution we ran another wire directly to the - terminal on the battery. Plug everything in. NO JUICE! Okay, so we pull out the voltmeter and start checking everything. ACC, has power, constant has power, Illumination, has power. The antenna wasn't getting power, but I knew it didn't work anyway, so i'm not exactly worried about that. I just want it to turn on. Is there something special and obvious that I'm missing? Any advice would be very appreciated.

Thanks for reading,
Shawn

 

I was just thinking about this some more. Could the fact that the constant was only reading 4v have something to do with it? Its suppose to be 12v isnt it? What could cause this?

 

Try running the constant directly to the + of the battery, work back from there. Make SURE it's fused!
Good Luck!

 

yellow - constant - this wire should always get a 12v, even when the car is off. if u cant find a good 12v in the dash, hook it to the battery with a inline fuse (10-15A)

red - power, this gets 12v when the ignition is switched on.

black - ground, to any gorund wire underdash or screw dirctly to something metal

after hooking up these 3 wires plug the deck in, swich the ignition on and if there isnt a signal then check the wires agian. with only these the 3 the deck will switch on, to test...

 

thanks for the suggestions, ill try to running the constant direct when i get home today. It also has been brought to my attention that it may not of been working because the didnt have the deck casing grounded.

Shawn

 

the deck case is the same as the black wire on the back
if the black one is connected then it sould work, if then then just hold the case on some metal

 

I want to make a correction about the yellow constant wire. Its not get 4v, its getting 0.4v... so thats probably just line noise. I guess I will just run a new positive to the battery and put a fuse on it like djmickyg suggested. But could this cause it to not turn on? I thought the constant was just for memory settings and the clock.

 

someone correct me in im wrong but im pretty sure pioneer uses the yelow wire as the power wire and the red wire is just a triger to switch it on..

edit: as well as keeping the memory on things like the clock.

 

Dude, I have the same deck although it is the premier. I love it, you will like it too.

 

For my stereo (Kenwood KDC-512) I used the cig lighter power wire for the constant. It has a constant 12v running through it when the key is removed.
When I had my pioneer I think the yellow wire was constant.

matt

 

gota love that lighter wire, i bridge everything of that wire. one day the fuse is gone blow
also u can use the lighters lightblub wire as the 12v ilum wire too (the orange)

 

on an 85 using the cig wire wont work, its 12v switched

if you were local you could bring it over and Id hook it up right... but thats another story

 

No not on a pioneer, it uses that wire for backup memory, the clock etc, but when the red wire is energized it draws only from that wire...

 

yeah, on the pioneer the yellow is the constant and the red is the switched. Thanks for confirming my guess mike. But do you have any idea why it doesnt want to turn on? It I just dont get why if the switched (red) wire is getting power and its properly grounded, why it wont turn on.

Shawn

 

Theres only 2 simple reasons it isnt turning on,

1) it aint getting power to the radio via the red / yellow or the black isnt grounded

2) or the radio is bad

Thats all there is to it, like I said If you were local id help you in person, but Lousiville isnt exactly local but its not 1/2 way around the world either.

I should re confrim what I said earlier, if you read it one way its wrong, LOL

The radio will ONLY draw on the yellow wire when the red one is powered and tells the unit to power up. Both wires have to see 12V +

 

Ok, I as installing a Sony deck one time, and I knew the power wires were good, but the thing wouldnt turn on. Turned out to be where I had grounded the ground wire wasnt good enough. I just moved that, and it worked. I know you said that its grounded straight to the battery, but double check its tight . Also, if you have at least ONE good 12V wire (straight from the battery with fuse, for testing ), hook it up to the constant AND the switched on the back of the CD player just to make sure the deck works. That will at least tell you if the CD player works because you KNOW you have 12V going to it whenever it needs it, on whichever wire .

~T.J.

PS - I installed another Sony one time, and I KNEW I had all the connections right. The damn thing wouldnt turn on because it was brand new and you had to hit the "reset" button on it first. I dont know if that applies to any of the Pioneers. I finally read the instuctions and found that little tidbit of info .

 

Never seen a Pioneer deck you had to reset it before its first use... And I have installed probally 10,000 or more

Now a Pioneer changer is a different story you have to reset them or they wont load the discs at all ...

 

hehe, problem solved. ALWAYS check your fuses twice. Turns out We were thinking the same as mazda. We were going to run a new wire off of the hazard lights circiut. we pulled out the fuse to see if it had anypower, and it was blown. turns out that mazda had run the wire off of the hazdards too and thats why it wasnt working. DAR!! ME

Shawn