Kenwood KDC-MP442U... power issues
 

I recently purchased a Kenwood KDC-MP442U head unit through Crutchfield for my 98 Flareside. Received it last night and did the install having disconnected the battery to avoid shorting. Reconnected the battery after finishing the wiring and i'm having two problems.

1) There doesnt seem to be any power to the unit with exception to the active insert/ejection from the slot load.

2) The power to the eject function is intermittant.

Now, the power issue didnt start until i did my seat replacement. Like a fool, after taking out my seats and uninstalling my amp to change out the floor rails, the power (hot) and ground leads touched and powered on my old Alpine head unit and flashed the dome light before i caught it and seperated them, then shalacking them with electrical tape. After that episode, the old Alpine wouldnt receive any power.

I pulled the old unit and checked its fuse which was fine, so i looked at the fuses beneath the steering wheel. The only blown fuse i can find is a 5amp in the number 10 slot which is noted as unused.

I checked the other fuses out of curiosity and found none that were blown. So, i let it sit for a couple of days until my new Kenwood came in.

So, now that the Kenwood is installed, its getting intermittant power. I know that the power lead is hot, however why would it not be powering the whole unit, and not just the ejection? Am i missing something here?

Unplug your harness from the back of the Kenwood unit. Turn your key to the on position. Test the red, yellow and black wires.

Red should have 12V (+) when the key is on.
Yellow should have 12V (+) even when the key is off.
Black should give you a solid (-) ground all the time.

Check these with a multimeter preferably to make sure you have at least 12V (+) on red and yellow. and 12V(-) on the black.

This should be enough to power on your Kenwood unit. If it doesn't happen, then the problem is internal and should go back to Crutchfield.

If you don't have power on red or yellow, then test every fuse, under the dash, and under the hood. should be restored at that point.

If you have power but no audio, check power from the blue/white wire coming out of the Kenwood unit, to make sure it has at least 5V (+), to power up the factory amp.

Good luck!

Yep. You were right. Pulled the unit and got my multimeter on it. There was no power coming from the main power lead despite the apparent connection. Had to remove the entire dash to get in there deep enough to find where the break was.

Spliced the wire, taped it off, put the dash back on and fired it up. New headunit works just fine.

Thanks for the tip.

Rock on!