ARRRRRRRRRRGH ELECTRICS!

[Alan]

A while ago the clarion single cd head unit got skanked from my mum's nissan micra. Fortunately we had a single cd kenwood mask head unit lying around so i said i would fit it for her. Wen't to get an autoleads adapter, bit of confusion which one i needed but i ended up with a standard nissan one. Plugged it in, it worked, great!

A few weeks passed, then one day i got a phone call from my mum, the radio won't turn on. I go to have a look, sure enough it's dead, I pull it out, all the wires seem to be ok, all the fuses are ok. I get a mulit meter and test between black and red, nothing, i test between black and yellow, nothing regardless of the ignition being on or off. I fiddled about for a while until a tried to measure between red and yellow. Obviously with the ignition off i get a potentioal difference of 12v and with it on i get a p.d. of 0v. Must be the negative i think. Folow the wire through the autoleads connector and it is connected to nothing on the nissan side. WTF??? Why was it working???

Trying to ignore that fact i try to find which wire is negative on the nissan side. I find one which acted like negative connected to the orange on the autoleads connector, so i swap the orange and black. The radio works, great i think! Put it all back in trying to forget that fact that it worked for no reason for a few weeks.

Got a phone call the other day from my mum, the radio goes off when she puts the lights on!!! ARRRRRGH That must be the wire which dims the head unit when the lights are on! So to my question after sucha long post...

what should i wire the negative to, i can't find one on the nissan connector, should i just run a new negative back to the body? And why has it stopped working? has a wire burnt out or what?

Sorry for the length of post!

 

[Ollie]

On the autoleads adapter, the red is ignition, yellow permanent, orange illumination, blue remote switch and of course black being ground.

Can't quite see how the thing worked in the first place if there was no ground, however sounds to me if the wire was there and it's fell down the back of the compartment.

However without looking at it i couldn't say for certain.

If it is missing the ground which is what i believe you said was missing, then yes, run a new ground from somewhere simple such as behind the glove box, or if you can just to behind the actual headunit. Doesn't need to be a brilliant cable, as i wouldn't imagine your mother runs a lot of other equipment from the unit.

Any other help give us a post.

Ollie

 

[Alan]

Re: Re: ARRRRRRRRRRGH ELECTRICS!

i think running a new one would be easier. I can't get my head round why it worked before!

Surely the wire wouldn't just fall out the connector?

Anyhow, if it works...

 

[Ollie]

Re: Re: Re: ARRRRRRRRRRGH ELECTRICS!

You wouldn't think so but don't underestamate the driving of our mothers! No, only joking!?

Once had the permanent (Yellow) fall out of the connector block. Had that of arced on to the chassis of the cd head unit, bloody hell!! Not even worth thinking about.

Yes, run a new mate!

Ollie