Hi everyone, I'm just about finished with the biggest pain in the *** of a stereo install ever. I bought my 93 940 2 summers ago for $500 and have been slowly but steadily restoring it; this weekend it was time to start modifying -- my volvo needed a good stereo. I assembled all of the necessary parts in the last week and went to install everything today to find that the PO of my car didn't reinstall the stock stereo properly after taking out their system. I was forced to cut and splice my head unit right into the car.

All of this went well and I have great sound now, the stereo works, and my headlights work (I did some reading and heard horror stories about the lights not working properly after stereo installs). The bad news is I've still ended up with a bit of a problem. The dash lights for the fan speed dial, light switch, dimmer, and defrost buttons aren't working, neither are my dome light or glove box light. All of the bulbs worked fine beforehand. Are all of these lights wired into the dimmer circuit? And if so why wouldn't they be working? I've checked all of the fuses and they are all in working order.

If anyone can offer advice I'd love it as I could get it fixed this week instead of waiting until next sunday and having a buddy drive accross the state to help me.

 

Sounds like a crossed wire. I've not done a 940 but the PO if my 240 did a similar thing. I found she'd used the existing radio harness for power, ground and speakers. The problem was she had not disconnected the Volvo amp from the harness, (which is up over the passengers' feet). And just to complicate matter, the OEM amp was fried and had it's own grounding problems
Try running your own 12v and ground and I'm guessing you did your own home runs to each speaker?

 

Update: Got everything working now except for my power antenna. One of my butt connectors didn't have good contact (because I did it badly). The antenna though I can figure out from another thread.