Rewiring the Stereo

Hi

The stereo worked in my 90 until the engine was upgraded from a DT to 200TDi. The old engine had a live feed taken from the altenator but this has now gone and the radio didn't work anymore. I took the yellow and red feed and moved them on to the cig lighter and the radio now works. The problem is that when anything electrical is on like the wipers, fan etc the radio or cd cuts out.

Can anyone advise me on the best place to pick up a live feed for power (off the ingition would be nice) and memory which needs to be permenantly live (could leave on the cig lighter?). I'm presuming I can put the negative to a bodywork screw. Any help with this would be mucho appreciated.

Cheers.

PS. The 200TDi rocks over the DT

The permanent live needs to be fairly high current - it is this line that the radio uses to get its power to drive everything, cd, amp, etc. The switched live is very low current, this can be taken off the back of the ignition barrel, or you can use a feed from any ignition switched live. The permanent live can be taken straight off the battery, although make sure you put a fuse in it. Otherwise, off the back of the starter motor where the brown wires all meet, but again put a fuse in it.

I've joined the red and yellow wires together a run them on a sigle cable to the battery with a 10amp fuse. It stightly better but it's still cutting out when there is an electrial load. It's useless to try and use the stereo in the dark - with the lights on the indicators or brake lights make it cut out. The problem seems worse at higher engine load too.

Is there anything else I can try?

Cheers

erm yeah check that your alternator is providing enough current - if the lights cause the battery voltage to drop low enough to switch off the radio then you have an issue - do volt testings with engine on, off, high revs, etc.

boydy1989 said:

erm yeah check that your alternator is providing enough current - if the lights cause the battery voltage to drop low enough to switch off the radio then you have an issue - do volt testings with engine on, off, high revs, etc.

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Thanks for that. I now have it wired direct to the battery so I suspect a fault on the earth/negative somewhere. At least it's working for the time being.