finally got around to ripping out my cd player to replace it with something else and noticed among the huge bunch of wires (it's a mess sigh....) a little black box with wires guessing it's the power antena relay but just wanted to make sure with everyone here first

 

how many wires? do you have a pic?

 

picture here, ignore the blue sparkly one it's running to my amp

 

its definatly not an oem location. i wuld guess that based on the wire amount that it is in fact a realay. the antenna needs to see a negative input(ground) when the radio is turned on in order for it to raise. i used a bosch relay for my antenna. this may be a lower amperage relay.

 

thanks, based off memory i think there is only one wire connecting to the actual deck itself

 

there would only be one wire to the radio which would be the antenna signal wire which is mostly a positive signal wire in all aftermarket stereos these days, the original system used a ground signal so the newer systems need to be converted to a ground signal which is what the relay is for.

to be more descriptive, the signal wire off the new deck powers the control circuit on the relay and the other side is grounded at all times. the feed side of the relay is also grounded and the fed side of the relay feeds that ground to the antenna wire to make it operate.

 

that's why i figured it was a power antenna relay due to the one wire, i've read about the relay needing to control it when using an aftermarket deck but having no knowledge of circuit diagrams makes things a little hard.

i'll rip into it on saturday and try to hook everything up (couldn't today due to dead battery and lack of time)

 

In the application you are refering to.....there should be 4 wires coming out of the relay...2 are the actual "switch" and 2 are the "coil" of the relay

If this was already installed in your car then determining what each wire is should be a cinch

1 wire is connected to a ground point
1 wire is connected to the signal wire of the head unit
the above 2 wires are the "coil" side of the relay

1 wire connected to a ground point
1 wire connected to the facctory antenna wire
the above 2 wires are the "switch" side of the relay

 

would the ground point itself be within the relay or just attached externally (as is the blackwire in the picture) there are also other wires looping around the back but i couldn't get a good look at them without removing the piece itself

 

ripped apart the center console to actually wire in the new cd player today

got better pictures of what most likely is the relay as well pictures here



the box is labeled d012/01c5 -101 txx and the 4 wires are G, Bw, Br, and B (which runs to the power antenna wire from the factory harness)

 

Disconnect it... It controls whatever stops working when you disconnect it.

Thats how I roll yo. I'm a server admin.. and in a datacenter if a server didn't have any stickers or identification on it, I'd turn it off... whoever bitched about it usually had some sort of ownership over it. Hehe.

 

lol that usually works however my antenna is currently stuck up all the time anyways (either due to this or motor being borked or whatever else) so it won't quite work


also does anyone know if you can use the white factory amp turn on wire to run an external amp? that's the one thing i couldn't find on the pioneer harness and as such my subs arn't currently working

 

Wow. I hope that's a joke. Otherwise, thanks for giving me job security (I'm a computer tech).

To the original poster, it's likely a relay for the power antenna.

 

Oh.. Personally, I hate other peoples wiring.. Every time I work on a car that has "mystery" items, I always rip it all out and re-do it myself. If the relay controls or is supposed to control the antenna, I'd rip it out and do your own antenna relay. Car audio isn't that difficult, you can probably re-wire the entire thing faster than finding out what that relay does.

 

that's what i figured just wanted to double check with someone who actually knows