Illumination Issue After New Radio Install

[nolatrader33]

2002 Astro with CD unit

After installing a double din aftermarket 7" touch screen stereo, I've now lost the lights for the "rear ac" "rear wiper" dash switches. I used a Metra wiring harness plugged directly to the factory harness crimped to the matching color-coded wires. I noticed a 9pin factory harness that was previously connected to the factory head unit which is no longer being used. I assume it controlled the CD player, is it possible there's an illumination/dim wire in the 9pin harness that needs to be connected to the main harness? I've looked at multiple wiring diagrams from this site and online and I can't find any info on the 9pin harness. Can any stereo gurus point me in the right direction? Thanks!

[Leeann_93]

Nope. The harness that the remote CD player uses is not used at all, nor is it even installed, in vans without the remote CD player; it has nothing whatsoever to do with lighting.

Those lights do die, but if you yanked on the wires when removing the gauge cluster surround, it is possible you damaged something either in the switches or in the wiring.

[The Drummer]

i would try to reconnect oem head unit with oem plug ,see if lights come back , if so your lights fuses etc are working ok , if not ,find the electrical shematic for color codes , crutchfield and others have that , check all fuses first .

[Cooki_monstre]

2002 Astro with CD unit

After installing a double din aftermarket 7" touch screen stereo, I've now lost the lights for the "rear ac" "rear wiper" dash switches. I used a Metra wiring harness plugged directly to the factory harness crimped to the matching color-coded wires. I noticed a 9pin factory harness that was previously connected to the factory head unit which is no longer being used. I assume it controlled the CD player, is it possible there's an illumination/dim wire in the 9pin harness that needs to be connected to the main harness? I've looked at multiple wiring diagrams from this site and online and I can't find any info on the 9pin harness. Can any stereo gurus point me in the right direction? Thanks!

Hey, don't know if you fixed this but here is what you definitely need to know, If you haven't discovered it yet. The older Metra wiring harness for the GM vehicles of these years has the pin for the lighting (Dimmer) in the wrong spot. I didn't know this, but my first radio I installed aftermarket I used the metra harness. The dimmer for the radio never worked. The radio I had installed was trash and so I replaced it with a radio that was already set up for the vehicle but had a Scosche adapter on it. The Scosche adapter has the dimmer pin in the right spot so the dimmer (radio would dim with lights) began working again. I didn't realize why until I read a comment on the Scosche adapter amazon page where someone said that the dimmer pin was in the wrong spot for their vehicle (Not an astro or Safari) and it had fried the headlight switch. That radio died and I got another trash radio to use temporarily while I waited on my replacement. The temp Radio has the same adapter as the other radio with the Metra adapter, so rather than remake the adapters, I just used the Metra one that was set up. Only had it in the car for around 1 week, but here is what happened

I would get random electrical shorting noises from my light switch. My running lights would turn on and off randomly (thankfully headlights stayed on when turned on). sometimes 5x in a minute with electrical shorting noise and other times 1x every 10 minutes. Anyways, switched my radio to the new one and used the Scosche Harness and have had no issues. It's odd because the previous radio that used the wrong harness never caused an issue, only wouldn't dim. Also, my rear heat, Rear AC, and Rear Wiper lights are all not working either (i think i would need to replace them, but who cares when I know the location of all the stuff anyways)

Here is a picture of the metra harness after I moved the dimmer pin to the correct location. I am not sure but it looks like metra might now be providing harnesses with both pins present, but you have to choose. Actually I made a video on my phone about this when I set up my new radio so I will link it here.



https://youtu.be/qdUZWv8Ojbw

Scosche Harness - https://www.amazon.ca/Scosche-GM02B-Har ... B0004FQRLC

Metra Harness - https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B0002B ... UTF8&psc=1