Stereo and ISO leads - my first post.

Hello to all!
This is my first post here as we have only just today bought our 1997 Range Rover DSE. I have used a few vehicle forums before and I know how valuable they are for all users.

As such I would be most grateful if anyone with could help me out with what could possibley be a simple question. I shall explain:

The car has Harmon Kardon on the speakers and steering wheel controls however the radio doesn't work. When I turn it on I get a whining hiss noise from the speakers, the radio shows a display (not iluminated) and when i tune it to a local radio frequency it just continues to make a whine. I was sure the ariel wasn't plugged in. However, when I removed the stereo I found it had two ariel inputs???? red and black and they were both plugged in - strange. It trys to play cd's from the boot changer but it never actually plays the CD. I'm sure its broken which is a shame. I thought i'd swap an Alpine head unit in but I find that ISO leads don't fit... well one of them does but the other wire has 10 pins in it instead of the usual 8 - its too long.

Can anyone tell me if the 10 pin connector is specific to the Harmon Kardon system or is it the steering wheel controls? Is there a 10 pin ISO connector out there that I can buy? Finally does anyone have any thoughts on the OEM Diversity head unit? (see picture).
Many Thanks in advance - Richard

The two aerial leads are for the diversity part of the radio.

The reason your radio was hissing and not working is because its broken somehow Mine started going the same way until eventually it just stayed broken. You need to send it off to be refurbished by someone like Roverville (www.roverville.us). They have a UK guy who refurbed mine and it now works perfectly and the display which had gone funny was also replaced.

Clarion UK can also refurb the radio so I understand from other people but I didn't use them I used Roverville.

Get it refurbished

-Wills

Thanks for the reply Wills, I think I found a thread were you'd said you'd had yours refurbished for £100 from that company.

Do you know what the Diersity part of the stereo actually does and why do it need two ariels? Does it matter which ariel goes to which plug?

Thanks
Richard

The Diversity system is explained below...

Diversity reception means that as vehicle movement results in loss of signal due to reflections from buildings (known as multipath distortion), the radio will switch to the antenna receiving the strongest signal. This results in less interference and better stereo performance.

Click to expand...

Thats taken from the ETM in RAVE. To be honest, it says that the Diversity system is only on NAS and Japanese vehicles but im pretty sure thats incorrect, from memory Im sure ive got two antennas in the back of my P38, one on each rear window.

Either way I think the antennas are colour coded so you know which way to plug them in. From memory my aerial lead were like this, one was black and one was black with a red piece of heatshrink on.

-Wills

Thanks Wills, yes I used to had a DT and it had one rear side window ariel. I noticed this one had two (one in each window).
Thanks very much!

Richard