legacycentral bbs

so about a year ago i went to the junk yard and picked up a sweet find. a stock pre-face radio with the aux-in put. loved having friends in the car and being like hold on, let me plug Pandora into the radio. everybody gets tripped out, they cant believe it came stock like that. anyway it started acting up about a month ago. whenever i would start the car the antena would rise and then drop back down when i turned the car off. well then the antena stopped this all together, i thought well i dont use the radio anyway since the stations are not that great here in washington and i have the aux. thennnn, when i would start the car and the radio would take a couple minutes to kick on like it was warming up or there was lose wiring but once it came on it wouldnt shut off unless i turned the car off so i assumed it isnt the wiring. as the weeks progressed it only got worse and now it doesnt do anything. so i was thinking it was a fuse but i checked and didnt see anything. so i bought another stock radio with the aux and again nothing. anyone have any idea or experienced this before. thanks in advance

First, you need to get a wiring schematic for the radio and then get your DMM and check for power and ground, that way you can start to eliminate components the right way.

Here's the radio wiring diagram
http://main.experiencetherave.com/subar ... iodiag.jpg

Check for 12v constant, 12v switched, and ground. It's likely one of those.

Have you checked the radio fuse in the fuse box?

first thing i checked was #17 radio fuse, was good but swapped it anyway. did nothing. looked at Haynes manual and found #25 which is a spare so not sure why but when i looked at the fuses in the engine bay #27 was blown so i swicthed that and then the antena started to operate so i figured i was good, nope. still nothing. i dont have a meter so kind of stuck i guess. going to try and replace #30 (clock, room light) and see if that helps.
the new radio is Clarion the old is panasonic. when i plug the new one in the lights for the knobs light up but thats it, no static no anything.

so replaced #30 and of course nothing. my manual has #22 and 25 being in the fuse box which they are not. fuse box only goes to #21. main fuse box starts at 22 and goes to 31. #s 24,25, and 26 are spares. #22 is for the sub fan. so not sure what im missing or reading wrong.
#22 is not really necessary as it apllies to the antena and should not matter anyway.

well decided i would try some kind of a volt test so i used one of the neon lights that i used to have in the car. one side is positive and one side is negative. i knew that if i tried the ground and the hot all the time side and the light came on i was good for testing. well it came on so i knew the ground was good and atleast the constant 12v was good. so i moved to the switched and nothing happen so i retried several times just to make sure i had it the right way and still no good. so i decided i would try the radio fuse and if that worked then it had to be my connection for the harness to the radio. fuse worked, okay now we're getting somewhere. moved to the connection of the switched side and the light came on, BINGO. pulled the wire out just a tad and tried it on the radio side of the harness and it lit up. plugged my radio in and sure enough that was it. now i have my antena working again and my seat belt flashing stopped and auto belt working due to fuse #27 in the main fuse box and the radio working because i crimped it to close and it got pushed in more and more.

big thanks to both H4_Duecer and Josh(Legacy777) for the ideas.

sometimes you just need to use a little common sense, take a second to thnk, and not be stubburn

Glad you got it figured out!