Hi all, a few months ago I bought a 85 firebird and it was missing it's radio. So I purchased a low end aftermarket radio to make sure all the wiring was good before I spent the money on restoring a factory radio.
Once I installed the radio everything worked as it should. Shortly after someone gave me a spare factory radio they had so I could try it out, when I hooked everything up all that happened was the radio powered on and displayed the time, and then immediately powered back off, but if you kept pressing buttons,, like say the am/fm button, the clock would stay illuminated but once you let off the button the radio would again power off. So I took it to an electronic repair store to see if they could fix it, they told me that they didn't specialize in radios but they could still take a look. They checked it over and said that they could not find anything wrong with it. So I figured the radio was just bad, so I purchased one off of Ebay that the seller said was working and installed it, but the exact same thing happened, the radio powered on and then powered off.

I would like to stick with a factory radio and not go with an aftermarket one. I checked the ground and power wire going to the radio they are both good, so I really don't know what could be wrong, is it the car? Do both the radios have the exact same problem?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks, Andrew

 

Check continuity between the ground and radio, also power. Check out the antenna too. It's also a ground.

 

ORANGE wire ( dash harness, Courtesy fuse ) should carry battery voltage at all times.

YELLOW wire ( dash harness, Radio fuse. ) should carry voltage when the key is in ACCESSORY or RUN

BLACK wire ( dash harness ) should be ground at all times.

If these 3 wires are tested and are equal to the description above,.... it's very likely you've got a radio problem.

 

Okay, thanks for the help.

I figured it out, the yellow wire was not getting power. The radio is working now.