ddub

Ok I've been putting my interior back together after replacing my heater core and ran into an interesting problem. I had my battery unhooked during this whole time so it wouldnt get drained and after I got the majority of things in I decided to hook the battery back up and see if everything worked alright. Well, as soon as I hooked up the battery the sidemarker lights came on as well as my tail lights, and I could hear the beeping from inside the car to signify the lights were on. The headlight switch was still set to off, and when I go one click up (the sidemarkers only) they just stay on, nothing happens which is fine, and then when I go another click up the headlights still come up/on just fine. Obviously I crossed a wire somewhere, and I have an idea that I'm going to go check, but if anyone has a suggestion or area to check let me know. I'll be back and forth to check. Thanks in advance.

ddub

Ok I did some troubleshooting and narrowed it down to one plug/connection. I unplugged everything behind the dash and one by one plugged them in and then hooked up the battery until I found the one that was causing the side markers to come on.




All the other ones work fine and aren't causing any of the problem.

ddub

Oh yah this is right behind the glove box next to the blower motor and evaporator on the passenger side fyi.

ddub

Bump, checked out the wiring diagrams a bit and just got more confused =|

WAYNE88N/A

So your symptoms before were: CD player and some other things would come on only if the headlight switch was on...

And your symptoms now are: Tail lights and markers come on with batt power...

Right so far?

And you've ruled out a bad light switch?

Since the two connectors for the tailights' entire circuit are on the far left side of the dash (FC-02 and CR-02), you've definetly got a wire crossed somewhere.

OR, the red/black wire to your radio (which is supposed to power the lighting via the light switch) is spliced into a hot wire (the radio's blue/red memory wire from the batt hot bus, perhaps?). Pull the 7.5A room fuse, then plug those connectors back together. If your tail lights don't come on now, that's your prob...

ddub

Yes those were my symptoms before.

My symptoms now are as you described but ONLY with that plug in the pic is connected. If I unplug the lights do not come on with battery power, but they still function normerly when I turn them on/off via the headlight switch.

I don't see how it could be a wire crossed, though, because the connectors can only go to one place due to length and size, and I've checked and rechecked things numerous times, which is why this is baffling me even more.

I'll go pull the room fuse and put the plug back in and see what happens...

ddub

Oh yah and the problems with the CD player/clock/cig lighter only working when the lights are on is still there, I couldn't find a problem when looking at the wires you told me to.

ddub

Ok, pulled the room fuse, plugged the connectors back in and the side markers/tails did not come on.

WTF happened? I didn't change any of the wiring so why is this happening all of a sudden?

WAYNE88N/A

Cool, we're getting somewhere now, lol...

Check the radio's wiring first, using the scenario I described above. There are several circuits that could be backfeeding power (the clock, CPU, or a bad light switch) to the tailights that use that same room fuse's circuit, but let's hope it's the radio wiring

ddub

Alrighty, went and checked the radio wiring.

Red/black, white, and red from the stock harness (as far as I can tell) are all spliced into the red wire for the CD player. Blue/white from the harness is spliced into blue/red (memory) which connects to yellow (power) for the CD player. Here are some pics.






Should I just cut red/black and see if everything works normally?

ddub

Oh yah and IIRC the red wire that is with red/black and white going into red for the CD player is what splices into the light for the cig ligher that you can kind of see in the bottom right corner of the first pic.

ddub

I've got some good news for once! But with it comes bad new of course. I put the room fuse back in and cut the red/black wire that goes into red for the CD player. I then plugged the connectors behind the glove box and the side markers/tails no longer came on anymore! In addition to that my freaking clock FINALLY WORKS and it doesn't reset. AND the CD player works without the lights on! However, here comes the bad news, I guess you could say. When I turn the car off the CD player stays on instead of turning off. This really isn't a HUGE deal as my mom's Porsche with factory CD player does the same thing (which is normal for those cars) and I've gotten used to turning hers off after I turn the car off. But either way any idea why it wont turn off with the car now?

Another interesting note too, my freaking heater/blower motor/logicon actually WORK now. Ever since I've had these wiring issues I've had problems with my heater/defroster too, it just wouldn't work very well, I figured it was just a dying logicon. After I did all this I turned the car on and BAM I get blasted in the face with very forceful air and it is working normally again, another plus I suppose

Thanks for all your help Wayne and let me know if you have any other suggestions about why the CD player wont turn off. But if you don't that's ok I can live with it. I owe you man, thanks again.

WAYNE88N/A

The CD player stays on because you still have the blue/red tapped into its switched power supply (which is supposed to be only the blue/white wire). Or another hot wire from the batt bus is tapped in somewhere. It should be easy to find, just turn the key off and put a meter on the various wires.

Needless to say, you should only have one wire going to the CD player's red input wire. That pic helped a lot as far as understanding what you were talking about.

What is that blue/red spliced into on the first pic? Looks like the power antenna wire, lol...The blue/red from the harness should be your "memory" wire, and should be hot at all times (of course). Make sure it's not spliced into anything else but the proper wire from the CD player...

I'm surprised you didn't blow that 7.5A room fuse, lol...

ddub

The blue/red you see in the first pic is the same wire that I show in the second pic. Blue/red goes into yellow, which is the main CD power and then blue/white is tapped into blue/red via the connection you can see.

When I was putting the interior back together originall, last summer, before any of these problems started, the white and red wires were connected into the CD player red wire which an audio shop did. However, the red wire is just tapped into the cig lighter for a power feed I guess that wasn't working before maybe? And then red/black had been torn out of something during the interior swap, it was near these wires and looked like that's all it went to so that's why I put it in with the other 2. However now I realize that was wrong and things work properly, mostly, now that it's cut.

Now the blue/white wire, if I understood you correctly the yellow (power) wire for the CD player is what blue/white needs to be hooked into (only), not the blue/red wire. Is that right? So should I just unhook the blue/white from blue/red, cut blue/red off of the connection to yellow, and then connect yellow to blue/white? Or am I just confused

WAYNE88N/A

Well, that explains it- that blue/red is always hot, and shouldn't be going into the CD player's yellow power wire.

Blue/white is your switched power from the accessory bus (needs key on), and should be going to the yellow...

You may be getting confused here. Are you sure the yellow is the main power input, and not the red? Most I've seen are red, although I'm not a "professional" radio installer, so I've only seen a couple. If your red wire IS your main power feed for the CD, it shouldn't be on the red/black of the illumination circuit.

Let's make it easy and start from scratch-

1) the blue/red is your memory wire, always hot, and goes to the memory wire to the CD
2) the blue/white is your main power, from the 20A "audio" fuse, and should be going into the main power wire for the CD (whenever you figure out what color this wire should be, lol). Note that the blue/white also splices off and goes to the door woofer amp, if so equipped...
3) the red/black is your CD player's lighting wire, and should come on with the light switch. It should ONLY be used for lighting, not for power. You knew that, though

ddub

Well, the yellow wire for the CD player is the only wire that is fused (on the cd player side). It goes through a grey box with a 10 or 15A fuse (can't remember) before continuing onto the CD player, this is mainly why I figured it was the main power source. I think I also asked which wire was the main power wire for this particular CD player a long time ago in the audio section when I first got the deck and was told yellow, but I'm going to go search that real quick and see. It'd be a lot easier if I had the install instructions for it, but unfortunately I don't.

ddub

Now I remember why I put the red/black wire into that cluster. First time I had problems with my CD player someone told me this:

"you seem to be working with an alpine radio that red and black wire needs to go to the red wire to the radio harness. the grey box on the alpine radio also has a fuse in it"

So that's why I put it in with those other ones already hooked to red.... It's starting to come back to me now.

WAYNE88N/A

OK, so we'll assume that the yellow is your main power, and the red is memory. Is the wiring connected per my simple 3-step plan?

We're on page two now, can't go up to see the pics anymore, lol...

ddub

1) Currently, no this is hooked into main power instead of memory (which we are assuming is red)
2) This is hooked to main power yes, but only through blue/red.
3) Yes

So if all this is correct I should cut the blue/red wire and hook that up to the red CD player wire, and then leave blue/white hooked into main power, right?

ddub

Just found the owner's manual for my deck online. It says that yellow goes to battery power and red goes to ignition or "switched" power. So then we were right with red being the memory, correct? So what I just described in my last post *should* fix all of this?

WAYNE88N/A

If yellow goes to battery, then that one's your memory. The red is the main power supply...Swap those bad boys over

ddub

Ok so let me make sure I'm straight on this. Yellow is the memory wire because it goes to the battery, and since red is ignition it is the power wire, ok. So....

Blue/red goes to yellow
Blue/white goes to red

The way it is set up now blue/red goes to yellow already but blue/white is tapped into blue red. So blue/white should be moved over to red on the CD player, right?

At least this is starting to make more and more sense as I go along

WAYNE88N/A

Yes, blue/red to yellow, blue/white to red. One wire to one wire, none of this gang splice crap. Red/black will go to your illumination wire on your deck, whichever color that is...

That should do it....

ddub

Wayne.... I don't know how to thank you man. I can't believe it but ALL of my wiring problems are fixed now *knock on wood*

Everything is working properly. The clock works and SAVES THE TIME, the cig lighter works, the blower motor works and I have heat and defrost again, my CD player works without the lights on and turns off with the key! I can't express how happy I am that all of this is finally taken care of.

Another side note, I left the red/black out of the CD player harness because it is illuminated without it. It only has one type of illumination and it comes on with or without the lights, so I figured red/black could be left out.

God Wayne, I owe you a debt of gratitude

WAYNE88N/A

No prob, dude, glad you got her fixed...Buy me a beer if I'm ever up there for some strange reason. I got free beer in lots of places, lol...

Make sure that spare red/black is taped up or otherwise isolated from ground, she'll be hot with the light switch on...