Odd electrical issue

cuseami

I replaced a stock radio with another factory radio with an aux jack. I took out the old radio and waited until the new one arrived after discovering that replacing with an aftermarket radio was not going to work. So after I cut the wire harness out and realized that this swap was a no go, I re-connected the harness. During this interim everything worked fine and the car ran well. When I got the new radio thing got weird. everything was good until the day I got the new radio. even before I installed it which was quite easy, the power windows stopped working and although the blower fan worked the A/C stopped working blowing out just air. Drove it home with now windows or now power locks but still with the blower motor and no A/C. Went back out after a while and now the only thing working was the turn signals and the exterior lights. everything else is now dead so no cluster lights and now starter engagement. Took a break and went back out and then the turn signals stopped working. I doubt any of this is relater to the radio harness (the wire gauge is so small and likely carries very low amp) so what could possibly be the problem? All the fuses checked out and everything was working fine until the day before yesterday. Things started to go out even before I installed the new radio...Ghosts? I am charging the battery right now but I have doubts about that since the interior dome lights do not come on. Any ideas???

joejoeson

When weird things happen it usually involves a bad ground, which won't cause a fuse to blow but it will cause things to go hay wire. Perhaps when you reinstalled the wire harness you failed to create a proper electrical connection somewhere, so there is something not reaching ground. Since multiple wires can share the same ground, if one ground goes out it could cause unexpected problems in other areas of the car. Since you already know how to remove the wire harness, I would remove it again, and reconnect it making sure you are very careful to connect all the wires in solidly. Since that seems to be the cause of the problems (besides the ghosts), that would be a safe bet.

Mr_Shiftright

I think so too. On modern cars a single wire can share information with different modules or components. You must have messed up the CAN BUS network somehow. All devices on the CAN bus can "see" every broadcast message, but normally do not react to irrelevant ones. Apparently, yours are reacting to something. From what I'm told, installing an aftermarket radio without taking proper precautions is the #1 suspect in problems of this sort.