Need some stereo/electrical advice from the group. We recently swapped the stock radio/cassette on our ‘98 Sahara for a basic Sony single-DIN Bluetooth stereo. Also bought a Jeep/Chrysler wiring harness adapter and soldered it to the harness that came with the Sony. So everything plugged in quickly using the harness, except for the ground wire. We soldered that to the braided ground strap (from the back of the stock stereo) and wrapped the end with electrical tape.
Everything works fine in accessory mode, but as soon as you start up and begin driving there are multiple intermittent loss of power issues with the radio, blinkers, wipers, cigarette lighter, etc. Sometimes you can drive it for 20 minutes and sometimes 20 seconds, but it always cuts out eventually. Shutting off and restarting sometimes fixes the issue and sometimes it doesn’t. The 4-way flashers continue to work fine even when the blinkers and everything else are all dead. When the power goes out, the stereo display goes black and the music stops but the faceplate removal chimes play through the speakers so there’s definitely power getting to the stereo on the ‘always hot’ wire.
All these issues would seem to indicate a bad ignition switch since everything that fails are things that are only powered when the key is on. However, a bad ignition switch seems unlikely because as soon as we swap the stock radio back in all the electrical problems go away immediately.
This leads me to think it must be something with bad/weak ground, but not sure where to look next. We attached the stereo’s ground wire to the braided ground cable from the stock stereo based an several posts that say to do just that. Does anyone know if this is correct? If so, is there something else we should consider? Or could we just have gotten a bad stereo?
Everything works fine in accessory mode, but as soon as you start up and begin driving there are multiple intermittent loss of power issues with the radio, blinkers, wipers, cigarette lighter, etc. Sometimes you can drive it for 20 minutes and sometimes 20 seconds, but it always cuts out eventually. Shutting off and restarting sometimes fixes the issue and sometimes it doesn’t. The 4-way flashers continue to work fine even when the blinkers and everything else are all dead. When the power goes out, the stereo display goes black and the music stops but the faceplate removal chimes play through the speakers so there’s definitely power getting to the stereo on the ‘always hot’ wire.
All these issues would seem to indicate a bad ignition switch since everything that fails are things that are only powered when the key is on. However, a bad ignition switch seems unlikely because as soon as we swap the stock radio back in all the electrical problems go away immediately.
This leads me to think it must be something with bad/weak ground, but not sure where to look next. We attached the stereo’s ground wire to the braided ground cable from the stock stereo based an several posts that say to do just that. Does anyone know if this is correct? If so, is there something else we should consider? Or could we just have gotten a bad stereo?
