I just bought a pioneer deh-6500 and im having issues with the radio keep memory.... All my fuses are fine and i wired it up right as it says....It can hold a station for 3 seconds after i turn off the car and take out the keys any time past 3 seconds it will not remember the station. wtf is going on????

 

the wire that should be getting constant power (i belive its yellow), has to be connected to some power lead that is always on... aka, turn the car off, take the key out, and find a wire that still has power... thats what you need to connect the constant power lead to.... the other power wire (i think either orange or red) wants to go to switched power.

check the manual to see about the colors.... i cant realy remember, but i think its yellow that wants to be constant power...

just get a volt meter on the wires, and make sure that you have correctly chosen the switched, constant and dimmer/illumination wires

 

I know what wire is what and ive wired it up correctly....
I didnt mention that i previously returned a pioneer deh-3500 for the same problem....I inturn got a sony cd player (new model) and it worked fine but i didnt like it and wanted a pioneer.

 

hrm... one thing you might want to check, you might be getting some sort of voltage drop... or spike on the constant power wire... something that is enough to **** the pioneer radio's off, but not enough to **** off the sony

id go and stick a meter on the constant power lead.. and watch it as you start the car, let it run, turn the car off, and then back on again after a few seconds... see if you get any spikes... if so you might need some sort of power filter

 

Will check and let you know..

 

Well I volted the wires and found out that what was considered the 12v ignition wire was actually the constant, The 12v battery wire was the ignition I guess. This is from a sosche wiring harness that clearly states on the wires that the red is battery and yellow is ignition.... hmm thats not cool.

Honestly I was scared to swap the wires because in my earlier days I blew two battery lines in two different domestic cars. I used to just match colors (If you dont know pioneer swaps the usual color scheme to red- ignition/yellow-power) and it would blow the line to the battery which forced me to run a battery line to the radio.

Well mazda got smart and if something sparked you just blow a room fuse. So with that insurance I swapped the lines and what do you know it works.

The store that i bought it from tried to tell me something along the lines of pioneers using a higher voltage for their new radios so that required voltage may have been the difference from the sony radio.

This is not a simple case of im a dumbass but then again I could have busted out the voltmeter a long time ago and solved this issue so maybe I am.

Thanks for all the input...-Gabe Medo

 

glad to hear it works... thats why i suggested it in my first post... ive installed in too many cars to ever trust those colors... buzzing it out with a meter is the only way

and btw... that store "really" sounds like they know what they are doing

have fun with your radio that now keeps its presets