I have a 91 240 wagon so it has 4 speakers which means there is the extra amp behind the dash. I got a wiring harness and bypassed that just fine so the speaker wiring should be good to go, but the power part is giving me issues.

In the fuse box, it says that pretty much all the dash stuff is running on one circuit, and it isnt blown, everything works. The old radio did work fine but I wanted to put my Alpine back in because it has ipod control.

I got everything wired up the way it was supposed to be but the stereo didn't power on. The 10A fuse in the stereo is fine.

I finally got a multimeter today to test the power and ground leads for the radio, and lo and behold, no power. I have no idea why or how that could have gotten messed up.

The ground wires seem to be ok since I get 14V when i put the positive test lead into the cig lighter and the negative on the radio ground, so i can use that at least.

The only solution I can come up with for getting my stereo working is to just tap into other sources like run switched power off the cig lighter positive lead, illumination off the dashboard lights, and memory off the clock or just run a line right from the battery since that draws almost no power.

Of course before I go and do that I'll open up the dash again to see if maybe something happened to the bundle of cable going up to the stereo.

If I can't figure it out, would it hurt anything if I just go ahead and bypass the radio wiring and pull power from those other places?

 

Im no expert with mods for audio systems. But Maybe yuo can splice and sauter on the wires to another set of working wires (that only are running current once the engine is turned on of course). If not then maybe look in your wiring diagnostic to see which wires could be replaced? maybe its a hrot somewhre in the wiring itself/the conectors for the wire? ...hope this helps!

 

Places you mentioned are fine to tap into. Uncertain on current capacity for the cigarette lighter for constant. Can tap both IGN/ACC and constant at the larger key cylinder wires, they will be fused since your Alpine should have them on the wiring. I would also check other fuses since a seemingly unrelated fuse may be the culprit.

 

If the stereo is fused, you can get power from anywhere. What I would do is find the fuse in the fuse box where the radio is fused and splice into that somehow. There should be a chart in the fuse box, I think. One thought is the power lead might go into the amp and then on into to old stereo. So if you cut the wires to the amp, it might have cut all power too.

 

which wires did you test? The ACC Power (red) wouldn't have voltage running through it unless the ignition was on. Did you maybe switch the ACC line with the B+ line?