Radio fuse blown four times this week: help (1 Viewer)

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Joined
May 14, 2010
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Location
Camarillo, CA
Website
www.thecoldfish.com
My radio fuse (front passenger footwell) has blown four times in the last week. I'd like to find and eliminate the cause.

I think the fuse blows at a point between turning off the truck ignition and starting it back up (after a rest).

A couple forum posts here on ih8mud suggest it might be the factory amp; problem is solved by disconnecting one of the seven wires to the amp.

I'm wondering if it could be the power antenna? That antenna has seen better days. I wouldn't be surprised if the antenna gets stuck going up or down, but I've never noticed. Wait, maybe I have. Twice, I've noticed the antenna only partly up after starting the engine. I use the switch in the cabin to extended the antenna up all the way.

Have you heard of an old power antenna blowing a fuse in a rig? Or in any car?

Thanks for whatever you can share.
 
Update: I learned that I think I don't know how to read an electrical wiring diagram (EWD). I disconnected three wiring harnesses from the amplifier under the front passenger's seat. When I started the truck up, the fuse blew again. So I guess this eliminates the amplifier as a source of the problem, right? (Assuming the three harnesses I disconnected are in the circuit.). I think there might be two more harnesses down there somewhere I could disconnect.

Should I be more confused that after I disconnected the three amplifier harnesses, the map continued to work and the radio sounded fine. I think the antenna control didn't work, but I'm not sure about that.

Could something behind the radio (in the dashboard) be causing a problem?

Thanks in advance for any troubleshooting help folks can share.
 
If it's just started doing it I'd look for one of two things - something you dinked with recently, or something like water intrusion.
Thanks. This is helpful. I don't dink with much on the rig, and I try to stay away from electrical, but I'll think about this.

I do get some water intrusion into the driver's side footwell, and that water can create electrical heartburn with the tail lights and headlights. But rain is rare in these parts, and these fuses were blowing in dry weather.
 
Report on possible solution.

Brought the rig to my trusty mechanic. He very quickly found a problem: a wire (blue with yellow stripe) from the amp and into a harness had broken from its clip in the harness (or worn away or corroded, it's not clear), making a lose connection that appears to be creating a short. The solution is to connect the wire outside the harness (as opposed to replace the whole harness) to see if it fixes the problem. I've taken on that task, myself. Wish me luck.
 
UPDATE: connected the blue-yellow wire to its mate, bypassing the molex connector. Radio is alive again, but only the rear speakers are working. The front speakers are dead silent.
 
I blew my center stack fuse this week. Oddly, the HVAC still worked fine, it just didn't have any display on the buttons or readout as to what's going on.

I was fiddling with a crappy imported cig-to-USB-charger plug in the cigarette lighter and that was when the fuse blew. So: anything weird in the power port/ cig lighter?
 
Dimes fit perfect into cigarette lighter holes, just saying.
Not that I would know anything about that. haha
 

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