Stereo Wiring Help!

[Hayden Russell]

I write this while hanging my head in shame at my foolishness.
Tonight I decided I would remove my factory CD changed in the console and wire up some power outlets from the wires in the harness... or at least determine if that was possible. So as I was working I'm listening to my AFTERMARKET head unit, and I splice the harness off from the rest of the wires in the console, and immediately the head unit shuts off...
long story short, I'm a bit of a predicament here. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Can't determine exactly which wire screwed it all up, but I'm trying to figure that out at the moment.

 

[J_C]

You may need to be more specific. The scenario I am imagining is that you left battery power and radio power live while cutting live wires and cut through a live and ground power wire at the same time so the snips used to cut, shorted it out and blew a fuse?

Hopefully that happened instead of shorting power to a head unit input, damaging that, but I suppose it "might" be possible to blow a head unit input and still have the head work, but that wouldn't necessarily blow a fuse.

Did you undo or at least isolate the wires to be sure none are shorting out still and check for and replace any blow fuse(s) ? On my '98 passenger compartment fuse panel diagram I see fuse # 20 (7.5A) and 29 (25A) for radio. '97 has only 10A listed for fuse 29 and a fuse #34. The diagram specific to your model year should be in the owners manual page 150 onward, which should also be online as a PDF, here:

http://www.fordservicecontent.com/Ford_Content/catalog/owner_guides/97expog1e.pdf

It is generally better to have power disconnected while working on circuits, though it may still be needed in the initial phase of probing for voltage.

 

[Hayden Russell]

You may need to be more specific. The scenario I am imagining is that you left battery power and radio power live while cutting live wires and cut through a live and ground power wire at the same time so the snips used to cut, shorted it out and blew a fuse?

Hopefully that happened instead of shorting power to a head unit input, damaging that, but I suppose it "might" be possible to blow a head unit input and still have the head work, but that wouldn't necessarily blow a fuse.

Did you undo or at least isolate the wires to be sure none are shorting out still and check for and replace any blow fuse(s) ? On my '98 passenger compartment fuse panel diagram I see fuse # 20 (7.5A) and 29 (25A) for radio. '97 has only 10A listed for fuse 29 and a fuse #34. The diagram specific to your model year should be in the owners manual page 150 onward, which should also be online as a PDF, here:

http://www.fordservicecontent.com/Ford_Content/catalog/owner_guides/97expog1e.pdf

It is generally better to have power disconnected while working on circuits, though it may still be needed in the initial phase of probing for voltage.

Last night determined that fuse #29 did blow... my bad! You got it exactly right! Thank you!