So my 96 Hatch is experiencing a problem with the audio.

I thought my headunit died and it wasnt the greatest so I decided to upgrade to a decent pioneer. The old headunit was on for a hour and then shut off and then driving again it turned on so i figured it over heated until it went off again and never returned. For the new head unit I made sure it worked fine by bench testing it and decided to install.

However I installed it and nothing worked. I checked #27 and #28 fuses under the dash for accessory and radio and they are fine. Went under the hood and the 7.5 for whatever it says is fine (cant remember exact name right now) theres only one more fuse for this biotch and thats on the headunit which i double checked and surely its good too.

So where to begin....I furtherly checked continuity of the constant and ignition wires in the harness and they have continuity so my guess is a faulty ground.....

oh and a side note the accessory cig plug doesnt work or the interior light but like i said the fuse is good.

Does anyone on the face of honda realm know what the heck to do next??????

my only next idea is run a direct ground wire from the headunit to the chassis and see if it works but that sounds sorta ghetto rigging.

please help me I hate electrical problems!!!

 

Does the radio get voltage on all three power wires?

 

Three? i have only known from constant and ignition?

 

Are you getting voltage for batt. wire and acc. wire? if you do try giving it ground and see if it works

 

Those two are the critical ones (Yel/Red and Wht/Blu wires). Is there voltage on those two at the rear of the radio? The third Red/Blk power wire is for back lighting on the dimmer circuit.

 

same thing happened to me. For mine, the unit would turn off but i would still hear the audio. I just smacked the radio and it started to work again.

 

ill check the red black tomorrow.....i really am starting to think its a ground.keep in mind like i said before the interior light doesnt work, accessory socket doesnt work, but yea the dimmer works and the fuses are all good.

im going to try a direct ground and this red black b4 i leave for Atlantic City tomorrow

 

Before you consider a bad ground, you must first verify that the Yel/Red and Wht/Blu wires at the rear of the radio have battery voltage.

 

there was continuity on the constant, and ignition from the harness itself when it was connected i know that

 

The bottom line is whether the radio gets voltage on those two wires. How did you measure continuity of the wires? Continuity with what?

 

tester of course

 

im going to keep it simple for you. first thing i would want to do is get electrical tape and then just tape each wire except for the speaker wires.. run 1 red wire from your car battery for power and 1 black ground wire going from a good ground spot somewhere on the firewall or near the steering.if you ever have a radio problem finding the issue is easy but make sure you have that power cable with a fuse box on the power wire... if you ever want to get more watts on door speakers then now would be a good time to run some cables from the radio to inside the door. now for the cables on the radio... get the red and yellow cable and connect to your red cable that you connected to the battery and the black cable well you already know thats ground and where you have your new ground cable connect that, and your speakers and you'll be good to go

 

oh and just to let you know.... sometimes its better to go ghetto rigg IF YOU MAKE IT LOOK CLEAN AND FACTORY then to spend tons of money on a mechanic because 3 mechanics have told me hondas have electrical problems

 

i understand your point too im testing some of this in the next couple hours

 

But what test did you do. Describe it.

Regardless, you need to test for voltage.

 

update: decided to just replace all the possible fuses regardless of how they looked

used circuit tester all of them work fine, tested the socket for interior light and it works i just got to get a new bulb for that.

tested the blue white wire real quick on the harness it lit up......so my next step is to just ground the god damn wire from the head unit to the chassis and test that but f it im leaving for A.C. in 20 minutes.

 

just run the wires to the radio like i told you and youll be good to go