2001 Radio/Clock Question???

[longyard]

When I'm driving my van during the day, neither the radio station light , nor the clock light, show on my radio. However, when I turn on the headlights at night they show up. Shouldn't the lights be on all the time? What's the fix?

[JebusKrist]

I think you've got a problem with your power wires of which you should have three a red, yellow and orange the red being 12v ignition wire which should only supply power when the van is running or the key is turned to the ACCessories position, yellow is your battery also known as constant wire which should always provide 12v and is used to keep your settings/time, and finally orange being the headlight dimmer wire. I'd make sure the red and orange wires aren't switched around or some other funny business especially if the radio is aftermarket more than likely it would be orange is switched with red, keep in mind these are aftermarket color codes and wont match the factory wiring. Good luck

Edit Clarification and cross reference:

On your van the headlight dimmer wire in the dash would be Gray and connect to Orange on an aftermarket deck, 12v ignition is yellow on stock GM wiring and red on the aftermarket decks, and the 12v battery or constant wire is orange on stock GM wiring but yellow for aftermarket decks. I suspect you've got an aftermarket deck in which case for power you would need GM Gray wired to Orange, GM Yellow wired to Red and the GM Orange wire would go to Yellow.

[longyard]

I think you've got a problem with your power wires of which you should have three a red, yellow and orange the red being 12v ignition wire which should only supply power when the van is running or the key is turned to the ACCessories position, yellow is your battery also known as constant wire which should always provide 12v and is used to keep your settings/time, and finally orange being the headlight dimmer wire. I'd make sure the red and orange wires aren't switched around or some other funny business especially if the radio is aftermarket more than likely it would be orange is switched with red, keep in mind these are aftermarket color codes and wont match the factory wiring. Good luck

Edit Clarification and cross reference:

On your van the headlight dimmer wire in the dash would be Gray and connect to Orange on an aftermarket deck, 12v ignition is yellow on stock GM wiring and red on the aftermarket decks, and the 12v battery or constant wire is orange on stock GM wiring but yellow for aftermarket decks. I suspect you've got an aftermarket deck in which case for power you would need GM Gray wired to Orange, GM Yellow wired to Red and the GM Orange wire would go to Yellow.

Thanks Jebus. The radio is actually a factory original, and later in the day, for some mysterious reason known only to perhaps the electronic Gods... the radio lights began to act normally. However, now the AM radio part doesn't work although the FM works great!

[Phantom]

The AM/FM connections are internal , and the purple/wht wire is also listed as a panel dim , what you might do is just remove the radio from the dash and make sure the wiring plug/harness has good clean and tight connections with no kinked wires , could be at some time prior someone may have had the radio out or worked on some other device in the area and caused a loose contact with the radio connections . Kinked/loose wires or bad ground can cause strange problems , usually when the headlights are switched on the radio panel lights will dim slightly for night time driving.

[JebusKrist]

I'm glad to hear your problem is partially? resolved it almost sounds like someone got in your dash like they did mine and started tapping wires for accessories that were perhaps later removed/correctly wired, believe it or not they installed a 3rd party rear window defogger in my van and tapped the power with a quicksplice off of one of the radio power wires! you can guess how well that worked