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Help with radio plug/pic request

735 views 12 replies 5 participants last post by  YnotJ92 
#1 ·
So I bought this Jeep with a non working Kenwood radio because prior to the previous owner replacing the windshield/windshield frame due to leakage, water leaked in behind the dash and got to the radio... When I was at the mechanic he checked the wiring and it was getting power so that wasn't the issue.

So today I dropped $200 on a Pioneer deck and bought a Chrysler 88-0x plug adapter kit which came with 2 male plugs. When I got back out to the Jeep and unplugged the plug for the Kenwood, I noticed that the Metra Chrysler plugs were too small to go over the plug in the car. Then I saw that the plug in the car had a couple wires cut from it which made me start to think it isn't the OEM plug.

The plug in the car has 13 pins.

Can someone provide me with a pic showing the OEM YJ radio plug?
 
#2 ·
You should be able to follow that wiring back and see if anyone has spliced it. I hate when p.o.s hack and splice wiring when there is a ready made conversion plug for $15~. If I wasn't at work I'd snap a pic for you.
 
#5 ·
Thanks very much! Yeah that is the plug in the Jeep. I ended up buying the wrong one from Best Buy... I'll take a look at which ones were cut and let you know. It shouldn't be too bad if I buy a new oem plug like the one you just linked to me and re-splice those wires in.
 
#9 ·
ok so a few days ago I wired up the radio briefly and it worked... I only spliced the wires together temporarily and was going to solder them later. Well I got around to soldering them the next morning and the way I did it (I guess) made the prongs that clip into the plug (the male end) a little uneven with each other. I went to connect it to the OEM plug and there was resistance. I had to try a few times and finally forced it in, and there was no power to the radio... Then I ordered a new Metra male end to splice the pioneer wires to and then connect to the oem plug again, and again, nothing...

So I took my pioneer radio to a local radio shop yesterday to see if somehow the radio wasn't working.... And he connected it to power/ground and it turned on... So Just a few minutes ago I was attempting to connect them again, and nothing.... I even spliced into the OEM Pink wire and the OEM purple/white wire and nothing.... Everything else in the interior is working.... I checked the fusebox under the dash and there is no fuse under the word (radio) but then again, that means that there wasn't when the radio worked a few days prior either.... And also I just looked at a few dash harnesses online, and there were no fuses there in those either. The space is almost too small for a fuse come to think of it... I don't know.

I did notice something the other day though.... When I initially had the radio working, it worked even with the engine/ignition off and the key out.... That tells me that this wiring is even more disastrous than I thought.

The next day I began stripping the interior (seats, carpets, etc.) and the only thing I disconnected was a wire the PO had running from the positive side of the battery up through the passenger side floor and up under the dash that was powering his emergency dash light.... I'm wondering if I wasn't paying attention and he also had that wire providing power to the aftermarket radio harness he had in there.... Because it was the day after I stripped the car/removed the dash light that I attempted to reconnect the radio and it didn't work.

I'm either thinking A) when I forced the connectors together, I pushed one of the prongs out of the way and it wasn't making a connection anymore, or

B) when I disconnected the power wire for the dash light, I didn't realize it was also powering the radio and therefore that is my issue....

If it is B) then that makes me want to rip out the whole dash harness and buy another one and hook it up, even more than I did when I found out there was a hack job of an alarm system installed by a previous owner.... Only problem is I wouldn't know what I was doing reconnecting everything!!!

I'm going to try to swing by a mechanic tomorrow and see if he can figure out the radio problem
 
#10 ·
I am no expert in this field but I can tell you that I just went through the same thing, and basically came to the assumption that the constant wire was bad and ran a fused wire directly to the radio from the battery through one of the many holes in the fire wall and it works like a charm. I would say that you are probably correct in assuming that one of the wires that you removed was somehow attached to the radio. So, just as a test, connect the red to purple/white, yellow to red/white, and black wire to ground from the radio. Also, the ground is very important. If you do not have a good ground, the radio will not work.
Car Radio Constant 12V+ Wire: Red/White
Car Radio Switched 12V+ Wire: Purple/White
Car Radio Ground Wire: Black
 
#11 ·
Yeah I tried that yesterday lol. I also tried grounding it in a few places... no dice. I dropped it off at the mechanic. He seems to think I may have blown a fuse because he checked the wiring the other day and it was getting power. I dont know.

He said, worst case scenario, he will have to run a wire from the fuse box.
 
#13 ·
The mechanic tested the wires and there was no power going to them. He hooked up a new power wire to the fuse box. The radio works now. Only the Right dash speaker works though... So soon I'll end up needing to buy new dash speakers if the left one is blown.

Anybody have those Kicker dash speaker replacements from quadratec?
 
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