i purchased my 89 rs about a month ago and about 2 hours after driving away in my new car the cd player turned off and never came back on. the car had a small amp running two 6 1/2 speakers. i drove without sound for a while but when i finally got around to trying to fix the cd player i saw that the ground wire from the factory wiring harness was burnt and exposed so i ordered a replacement factory harness and installed a new cd player and removed the amp. it worked when i turned on the car to test it but later on when i was driving to work it just stopped working just like the other cd player and didnt come back on. i checked both radio fuses and they arent blown. what could cause the radio to work for while then stop working?

 

Loose/bad ground, depending on the radio, some require an antenna to be plugged in to cover a floating ground, the antenna wire could have been bent/crushed/cut (coaxial) and could be not connecting. Power wire could be loose somewhere in the car and when you go over a bump move back and fourth over time.

Other than that, stamp me a big yellow ? on my forehead.

 

how do i check the antenna wire? ive been meaning to try running the ground wire somewhere else to test if that was the problem but its been raining non stop for a couple of days

 

I would check the power and ground wires before the radio harness. Sounds like a bad connection somewhere that is cutting the power or losing the ground.

 

Is there any way to run power and ground wires from the cd player harness to a source without using the existing car harness. I think the wires might be damaged somewhere that I can't see. Or is it possible to replace the power and ground wires in the car's harness?

 

You could tap into something else in the car that has power, like the cig lighter? Grab and test light and test the wires while moving them around. That may help you figure out if there is a problem in the wiring.

 

If you have a 12 volt power supply you could use that to test it.I have one from radio shack that I use to bench test electronic equipment.You could also try a car battery if thats all you have

 

Just plug some wires in the fuse panel. if it works for a while then the grounds are good. Use a test light to see what is hot with the key on (red wire), & hot all the time (yellow wire). I found places in the fuse box where their is a isolated (single) female connector. So I just plugged in a male spade connector to get the power. If you dont have experiance with this sort of thing i would not go any further then that. Its to hard to explain how to do it other ways. Your cd player is not messed up so no need to conect it straight to a battery. More work with the same end result.

If you want to test the black wire (ground) use the test light, hook one side to a ground and the probe to the black wire for the cd player. dont worry about taking the wire apart to test for ground, no risk unless u put power to it lol. the ant ground metthod i would use is to see if its loose at the fender, follow wire to look for breaks, & look at where it goes in the cdplayer to see if its screwed up in any way. If so get a new one. thats it dude, only 4 reasons.