ok, so i sold this guy my old head unit, when i pulled it it worked 100% perfectly

he emailed me today saying when he installed it, after like 5 minutes of playing, it starts to smoke and blows fuses

anyone have any ideas?

he claims all the wiring is correct, and he tried hitting the reset button etc...

any help would be appreciated

thanks guys!


Modified by puma1077 at 10:46 PM 4/15/2006

 

he claimed to connect his wiring connected correctly, but how is the integrity of the wiring? it isn't going to be really wired properly if he just twisted a bunch of wires together and has a bunch of bare wires touching and shorting out. if it's blowing fuses, there's probably something shorting out.

have him take a picture of his wiring. have him cut all the stripped wires and strip only the constant power (switched), accessory (red) and connect them to the battery terminal of his battery and run the back wire to ground. if it powers up, it's his wiring, assuming he didn't kill the headunit yet....

 

his wiring sounds a bit fishy.

 

Ditto the above, he has misfired something, or more then likely he has done a shitty wiring jog and/or a crappy install and wires are being "pinched" and are shorting out, or he has wired it all properly and cleanly but he has speakers or speaker leads shorted out, and the HU does not have short protection.

1- What kind of HU is it, make and model?
2- What kind of car did it go into, year, make and model?
3- Is the HU wired to the oem radio harness using an adapter harness?
4- Is there anything else aftermarket in the audio system, [speakers, amps or subs]? 94

 

head unit is a pioneer premier DEH-860MP

hes putting it into a early 90s toyota tacoma pickup

im guessing hes using an aftermarket harness, hes gonna send me pics of his wiring in a bit

and i saw aftermarket speakers, he said he isnt even using the deck amp and is only using the RCA outs to his 4 channel amp

 

Yeah, tell that guy to eat ****. It worked when he got it and that's all the warranty you need to give him. It's not your fault that it smoked... As everyone else has said, it's probably a miswire and you're not liable for it.

 

i so want to say that, but he has my cell # and knows where i work

in his mind im sure that he thinks i fucked him over, and i know how unstable some people can be

he wants me to pay 40 dollars for half of repair costs

any ideason what i can tell him

 

ok, he sent me pics, and i think i know whats going on

here is the pic he sent



now here is the diagram from the installation manual



what it looks like to me, is for some weird *** reason, he took out the fuse resistor on the power cable, so the deck is getting to much current, which would explain deck frying and fuses popping

am i right to assume this?

is that thing even a fuse resistor? i know its something important cuz its a huge *** piece thats hard as expletive to open up

 

look at the rest of the harness... the speaker leads (unless there is a way of turing the decks internal amp off, as some decks can do that) and probably none of the 12v trigger wires (remote, power antenna) aren't insulated either. if you aren't using them, they should be insulated with tape, butt connector or heatshrink.

imo, install error killed the deck.

 

Yeah, tell that guy to get bent.... Speaker wires are not capped off, and they probably touched ground and smoked amp. End of story.

 

i sent him an email about the resistor thing, and this is his response

"i didn't originally take out the resistor. i used the 860 harness, and even bought a new factory harness just so all the wiring would be new. after it kept popping fuses, i removed the resistor thinking it might be the problem. i assure you it was in there at the start. removing it was just part of the troubleshooting i did, and it made no difference. i installed my old deck again, and it worked with and without the resistor in place. i knew you would see that i removed it, and should have told you that it was there when i started, only removed to see if that was the problem. sorry if i caused any confusion. "

ill tell him about the exposed speaker wire

 

it was a poor install with poor judgement on how to fix the problem.

 

ya, the fact that he plugged in the harness at any one point in time without the resistor was probably more then enough to completely destroy the internal amp

 

The "resistor" is not a resistor but an in-line choke coil, [an inductor used to limit or suppress AC current without stopping DC current] commonly known as a noise suppressor, removing it had nothing to do with what happened with the HU.

With that said, not capping off the unused speaker leads, is a sure way to destroy a HU, if they, [anyone of them] shorted to ground it would blow the outputs, [internal amps output stage] shorting out the power supply, the result would be blown fuses, and it would be my guess that is exactly what happened, he said after 5 min. of playing it started smoking and blows a fuse, word for word what would happen if you used the preamp output, [RCA outputs to an amp] then shorted out the speaker outputs on the HU, it would take about 5min., [depending on how loud he was playing it] for the HUs internal amps outputs to heat up enough to blow, [the HUs preamp stage would continue to work until the HUs power supply shorted out, blowing a fuse].
If the HU goes in for repair, and it is found to have blown outputs, [which is my guess] then that is exactly what happened.

I agree with everyone else here, it was installer error that damaged the HU, [his explanation of what happened tells me that] and even though removing the choke would not cause the problem, it tells me that he knows very little about car audio, how to install it or how to troubleshoot a problem with it. 94

 

fcm - i love you

im gonna copy and paste that middle paragraph to him

 

FCM just elaborated on what I said...

 

thank you to you all

i got out of a very sticky situation, and i also learned alot!