Wiring in new head unit question

[Dirtrider216]

So I ordered a kenwood dmx905s headunit with the idatalink maestro Connection kit which began as a pita because my laptop running Windows 10 pro wasn’t compatible with the software I needed for setup for the idatalink so I had to drive my car from where I was working on it to my house where I had a non pro windows 10 computer to finally setup the idatalink. My question though is, in the power wires from the car to the headunit, I have black (ground) red (battery) and yellow (power) but the red wire doesn’t have any power coming to it with the car on. Therefore my headunit does not turn on unless I link the yellow wire to the red wire in which case I would need a switch to shut the radio off when the car is off. So does anybody know of a circuit I can easily tap into that is powered on with the car and off with the car so I don’t have to add a switch for my radio?
I used a multimeter to verify that yellow and black have power and red does not, and I also have double checked that everything is indeed correctly connected

 

[Quiero]

I'm assuming you are using a conversion harness plug?

Maybe not the right way, but the simple way is to take your meter (or a simple 12V tester) and find a switched +12V circuit to tap into under the dash.

 

[L8Shift]

One power wire goes to always hot, for the radio memory.

Another power wire is to power the radio.., accessory power

Another wire to allow activation of the rear cam, ..... due to big brother... (tap into parking brake?)

Just trying to remember... though I had the Kit pre-wired by Crutchfield at purchase.

 

[Dirtrider216]

The accessory power wire doesn’t get any power, even with the car fully on and everything plugged in so the radio would not turn on at all unless I connect the red from the radio to the yellow from the car
And I got a full kit from crutchfield
I have the jbl system without nav and got the idatalink add on with options to retain all factory features

 

[cloud]

I'm not sure how helpful this is, but I put in a single din Kenwood xcelon using the JBL interface box wiring instructions. I just spliced a ton of wires according to that and it all worked fine. Although the tato box doesn't always work properly for my steering wheel buttons.

I don't have the instructions or pictures of my wiring adventure that day. I'm sure they're available on the web somewhere though.

I have an 03 v8 with JBL and formerly with nav. I pulled the DVD thing and put an amp there for my replacement sub.

Sent from my XT1710-02 using Tapatalk

 

[Randho]

Kenwood

Hi, new to the forum and noticed this thread. I just bought an 03 T4R and updated the head unit to Kenwood DPX793BH, the black is ground, the red is connected to switched power (power on when ignition switch is in the acc. or run positions) to turn on and run the unit, the yellow goes to battery power to keep memory alive. The rest are either speaker lines ( usually 8 of them) or the misc. lines for the particular unit capabilities, ie. antenna power, backup lights (to trigger a camera), etc. Sounds like you may not be attaching to the correct power line/lines ... Hope this helps...