Radio Problem

Y’all, I was installing a radio, ‘99 Tacoma, the wire harness was missing so i was just connecting the wires together to the radio, BUT once I finished, the radio only turned on when the headlights are one??? Clearly I wired something wrong? Can anyone help me? These are the wiring diagrams that Kenwood.

 

when you say the harness was missing do you mean the 10-pin and 8-pin connectors that would connect to the factory radio were missing or you didn’t have the harness to go from those connectors to your radio?

 

it sounds like you have the red wire from the radio harness attached to the green/red wire on the trucks harness. The green/red wire is the illumination wire. The red wire needs to be attached to an ignition switched wire, should be the green one on the trucks harness. Before you do this get a test light to verify power and grounds.

See plate #30 in the attachement.

 

Both of them were missing so I just connected wires alone

 

I think I just switched the red and yellow wires from the radio

 

So I checked the wires and the blue/yellow wire (which is supposed to be the constant power) doesn’t even give any power. Somehow the only thing giving power is the illumination wire and the HU that I have doesn’t have an orange illumination wire. The dash lights and the dome light don’t turn on either.

 

Check for blown fuses and/or opens in the circuits

 

So I checked for fuses and the AC fuse is out in the engine bay and the STA fuse in the inside box also doesn’t give any power. I replaced both of them and they still don’t have any power. Are they just supposed to be like that?

 

So here’s the summary so far.
- Now the dashlights dome lights and anything that should be connected to that don’t turn on and don’t have any power. In other words Illumination wire has no power

- 12V Constant Wire doesn’t have any power

- Radio only turned on when headlights turned on despite how I arranged the wires at red and yellow

- now radio doesn’t turn on in general because the illumination wire doesn’t have power

I don’t know what to do now

 

Have a Fire Extinguisher handy!!

At this point have you looked at all for the original Radio harness wires that must have had the plug cut off??

That is the most simple thing to do.!!!!!!

Does the radio have a fuse Did you check if that was open?

Is this a new out of the box radio??

What are you doing for speaker wires running your own??

 

I have all the wires connected except the 12V Constant, 12V Switch, Illumination, Dimmer,

it has a fuse and I checked and it was still good

And it’s a used radio. I used it on my 98 Tacoma (which I crashed ) and I recently bought a 99 Tacoma and I’m at the point of installing the radio.

 

SERG, no help here but just want to give you a for attempting this quest.

 

All the wires you need have to be there someplace taped off

Brown is the ground

Gray is switched power

Blue Yellow stripe is constant power

Green Red stripe lights.

These are all part of the radio harness .

Unless this truck came brand new from the Factory without a radio this harness is there very well some fool cut the plug off

 

Yeah the plug is cut off, all I need to find out is why there isn’t any power in the lights and constant power wires

 

This isn't helpful to your specific question, BUT if I was in your shoes I would try to find the oem connector for the end of harness on truck side and resolder that back on and then get an adapter harness to plug between truck harness connector and radio harness connector. That is an option as well.
But that might not help either if you don't have power with key in acc. Position.
What if key is in On position? Anything different?

 

Constant power should be from DOME fuse. Have you checked that? The parking lights and dash lights use TAIL fuse.

You really need to look at a wiring diagram for your truck.

 

No nothing different just dead and not above :/

 

I’m going to check those fuses and look at the diagram hopefully I find something

 

I can offer no more help I gave all the wire colors .

Could be simple corrosion on the wires .

Might be you have poor connections .

Best of luck!!

 

If the dimmer is turned all the way down, or disconnected there will be no illumination on the entire dash. You need a wiring diagram and a fuse block diagram. If you’ve just been trying wires due to color, you might have better luck with a torch...