OLDYELLR

A few months ago I bought a Firebird radio from a member here to replace my original '85 Camaro radio, which had developed a motorboating problem. The radio appeared identical except the buttons and ***** were grey instead of black. When I installed the radio it worked okay, but the LED display was really dim but eventually brightened up to normal after about 10 minutes. This happens every time I turn the radio on. While driving yesterday I turned on the headlights and the display disappeared altogether. This was in the daytime, so I don't know if it would be visible at night. I know the display should dim when the lights are turned on, but not go totally black.

So, is this something I can easily fix or replace? I still have my old radio.

OLDYELLR

Okay, a correction. I just checked it in the garage. It's been a while, so I couldn't remember how the dash and radio display dimmer worked (brightest is with the headlight **** CCW). The radio display is still on when the lights are on, just a lot dimmer, which I couldn't tell when driving in the daytime. But the main problem is the long time it takes for the display to show and brighten when the radio is turned on.

OLDYELLR

*bump*

Come on you GM stereo gurus, does nobody have an answer to this?

Could it be something like a bad ground somewhere?

ThirdGen1984

iTrader: (1)

try un-pluging the dimmer wire from the bunch, my aftermarket doesn't dim at all because i don't have it hooked up, just make sure you unplug dimmer and not illumination, that should fix your issues

OLDYELLR

So which one would that be? There is the 12-wire plug and a 2-wire plug with a brown and orange wire.

ThirdGen1984

iTrader: (1)

the illumination wire is the orange wire, the dimmer is the orange and white wire, disconnect the orange and white wire and try that, if you need a picture of the factory radio wiring color codes, let me know

MintWS6FORMULA

What he said . Check the connection for the dimmer wire. Sounds like it is getting a bad connection on the back of the radio. You might of to use an electronic cleaner on it and check for bad wire/kinked wire.

OLDYELLR

That would be great. I haven't yet gor around to looking at it. The change happened when I replaced the original stereo with another one, so if what you say is true, it may well be a problem with the connector.