Hey, im kinda new to this forum. My parents just gave me a 1995 jeep Cherokee. It has allot of problems and Im paying to fix them. The car runs for now lol but the radio keeps saying protect. I have bought a $150 deck and spent $50 on 2 speakers for the car. I payed bestbuy to put the deck in, then it started saying protect. I asked the guy how much it would cost to fix he said $75 and hour for troubleshooting, then about $100 to fix it. I diddnt want to pay for that so i have been trying to fix it myself.

I know theres a short somewhere but idk where. The back speakers have been pulled out of the ceiling, the people who owned the car before my parents bought it did this. But the wires seem fine.

Also I have noticed that sometimes the radio starts to work i have gottin it to work the first time for about 10 mins then the passenger speaker started to fog up then it went back to protect.

Then about a day or 2 ago i started my car up and it started to work again then i shut my door then the passenger speaker fogged out again and it said protect.

I put the driver speaker in my self i cut the plastic part off that the car has on the speaker wire and wired my new speaker wires to it. I even took those off to see if it still said protect, and it did!

I have unhooked the passenger speaker and sense then it still has been saying protect. I DONT WANT TO PAY LIKE $200 DOLLARS ON A OLD CAR FOR THE RADIO CAN ANY BODY PLEASE HELP.... ANY ADVISE WILL WORK! THANKS

SORRY ABOUT WRITING A BOOK LOL JUST THOUGHT I WOULD PUT ALL THE DETAILS IN!

 

So "protect" means there's a short in the speaker wiring? If so, you may be better off to just run new speaker wires.

 

That'd be my guess, it's protecting the output stage against damage.
Probably 18 year old door wiring has flexed one too many times, agreed on just replacing it all.

 

Open your driver and passenger door, look for a rubber boot that goes from the jeep to the door, check all those wires, the wires tend to pull apart just go over it all checking for breaks. If that looks all good then pull the stereo out and check for any broken or loose, wires, it sounds like there is two speakers wires are touching or something else, if all the above fails i would undo and pull the wiring harness for the stereo out, undo all 4 channels for the speakers. Then just tie in the yellow to yellow red to red black to black, bascially just hook the power wires up, this way you can determine if your stereo is what the problem is, if the protect mode goes off, then you may be in luck, leave the power on to the stereo and hook each channel one at a time, this way you can find where the actual problem is. Sorry that this is so long but hopefully you get your jeep back up and playing, if you have any other question feel free to ask me. Also welcome to the Forum!!!

 

Thanks I appreciate your help, i had the car turned on and i was messing with the wires that went through the boot but it still said protect but tomorrow im going to take it off and look at the wires hopefully theres a problem there so i can fix it. Thanks for all your help!

 

No problem at, seriously tho if you need any more help let me know.

 

The first thing I would do before messing with it, Since you said that you had best by install it and I am assuming you bought the stereo from them too. Take it back and have them repair it and install it correctly! If the shorted something out they have to repair it and they are responsible for doing the job right. They should have never told you that they are going to charge you to repair the stereo since it is new and they installed it. All the repairs should be covered by the warranty. Take it back and speak to the store manager to get the problem taken care of. Good luck!

 

Thats what i was thinking

 

Exactly right!


Except that, now that he's touched it, he probably owns it. That's how that works.


Hamilton, first of all, welcome, and second, kudos to your parents. They've given you a good opportunity to learn a lot of good things. You'll not only learn about fixing a car (always a good skill), but you'll (I hope) learn some general troubleshooting skills that can be applied to other things in life. More importantly, you'll learn the value of a buck and the value of your time. Those are very important lessons in life.

And you're going to love the Jeep!



No problem! Ya done good!


Now, about that troubleshooting. Here's where many people go wrong - they jump from one thing to another. People will come on a forum and describe their problem, and other people will say, "Replace THIS, replace THAT", and they'll do that, spend a lot of bucks, and go crazy and get frustrated. AND, they won't learn anything.


SHELBYGT gave you some excellent advice. Take it one step at a time. One. Step. At. A. Time. Isolate each possible cause, and be sure of your results, BEFORE you go to the next step.

Also, with complex problems, it helps to take notes on what you did. I'm an engineer, and we do this. You can get yourself ROYALLY confused after a while, not knowing what test had what results. I work with some pretty smart people, and we all take notes. You just can't remember all the details. Get a cheap spiral bound notebook and write down what you do, and what results you had, and you'll find life a lot easier, ESPECIALLY when doing electrical stuff.

And, to add on to what I said about owning, it, RTorrez is right. That's what you SHOULD have done, but the minute you worked on it, you gave them an out. I'd still suggest trying to get them to fix it, and maybe take your Dad along for support, but I think your chances are slim. Lesson learned, I hope. If you pay someone to do a job, and it's not right, it's THEIRS to fix. Generally speaking, the minute you touch it, you own it.

Even if you lose that battle with the installer, folks on the forum here will get you through this.

 

You have any luck with your stereo?

 

Thanks i appreciate the help. What i did though is i bought the deck and speakers from walmart then tried to put it all in my self and figured out that it diddnt work. I took it to bestbuy and they said the red battery wire was dead so the replaced that and then it gave the deck power. But when he turned it on it said protect and i asked him why its doing that, he said its cus 2 wires are touching and its throwing the circuit off. I asked him if he could fix it, he said he could but it would be like $100 an hour for troubleshooting and if anything needed replaced he said i would have to pay for that too. I decided just to take the car home and try to find it my self and if i couldn't take to somewhere else cheaper. Thanks to 'Shelbygt nsm' for giving me the idea to take the boot off. I took the boot off the driver door and saw both speaker wires not taped and touching each-other i pulled them apart and it still said protect, but tonight im going cut the wire back and retwist them and tape it and give it a try. I also checked the passenger boot wire and they were perfect so i hope this fixes it.

 

Still working on it, thanks for the advice to look inside the boot. I took the driver door boot off and saw both speaker wires untapped and touching eachother i separated them and tried to see if protect would go off but it diddnt. Tonight im going to cut the wires back and retiwst them, then tape them up and see if that fixes it. I checked the passenger door boot and the wires had not problems so i hope this fixes it!

 

Brand and model number of the deck.

 

No problem at all man, kinda rare but back doors do the same thing, sometimes the wire will break pretty far up in the boot, and there hard as heck to see, hopefully you get it fixed, but if you dont, let us know so we can figure out what going on, have fun!!!!

 

Its a kenwood im pretty sure its KDC-400U. I payed $150 dollars for it.