Hi! After a few years of driving my '96 cherokee sport around without a working radio I've decided to dig my heels in and fix it.

Here's my situation:

I bought this jeep with an aftermarket radio that seemed to be getting no power. I've checked all of my fuses with and multimeter and replaced all the ones I have found to be non-working. I then connected my jeep radio wiring harness to my new radio. It still won't turn on. Since I've checked all of the fuses in jeep and replaced the old aftermarket radio with a newer one (which I know used to work when I had it in my old subaru, also check the 10A fuse in that to make sure it worked) I am unsure how to proceed with the repair. If it's not the fuses or the new radio, I'm thinking that it might be that the wiring harness has a short somewhere in it. Does that seem like a likely scenario?

Is there someway to test whether the radio wiring harness receiving power without yanking the whole (or part) of the wiring harness out?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

P.S. - The radio/stereo that I'm using as a replacement is the Alpine CDE-141. Also, I haven't checked the fuses in the fuse/relay box under the hood because I can't find any information on what those fuses go to anywhere! I do not have a factory owners manual for the '96 but I would greatly appreciate one because this year seems to be different than both '95s and '97s!

 

I recently went thru this exact exercise. The '96 has the same sound electrics as the '95, so download the '95 FSM, Electrical section, audio, plug connectors wire colors

check (or download) the connector positions for your aftermarket

cross-match them..mine had been connected by a PO in a quite logical way...but it was wrong!

are you getting power and earth at the relevant Jeep audio harness pins with the radio out ?

 

as u/awg points to, you want to try and locate a proper wiring diagram. From there using a test light with the key off and the test light grounded you need to be able to detect 12v. at all times on the Pink Wire. With Key on you should have 12 volts at the violet/White wire. and the black wire should be ground.

aftermarket Radio harnesses are fairly universal. The pink wire should be connected to the Yellow wire on the radio(Always on voltage for memory). The violet wire should be attached the red wire of the new radio (This is your Acc Power that turns the radio on when the key is on). And the black wire goes to the black wire or run your own ground.

 

As I understand it, there's a wire with an aftermarket radio installation that you have to connect to get the HVAC control lights to function. I read about this once but now can't find any info on it. Does anyone know anything about that?

 

Thanks for the help everyone! After looking at these replies and doing some research + troubleshooting of my own I think I've determined the problem but I'm unsure how to fix it. Here's the situation so far:

• I've tested all of my fuses. None are blown, all seem to be working (I'm getting continuity on my multimeter).
• My jeep stereo harness is correctly cross-wired to my aftermarket stereo.
• After testing for voltage (12v) and ground at the connections between my jeep wiring harness and my aftermarket stereo I found that:
  • I am not receiving voltage through my constant 12v wire (pink) on my stereo wiring harness while the car is off or on = Not working
  • I am receiving 12v through my switched 12v wire (violet/white) on my stereo wiring harness while the car is on = Working
  • I do get continuity at the ground from the ground wire (black) on my stereo wiring harness = Working

Therefore, it seems that the problem must be with my constant 12v wire (pink) in my jeep wiring harness.

Does anyone know how I might replace this wire? Does this wire go through the internal fusebox, i.e, given that my fuses are all working correctly, is the problem located on the wire between the internal fusebox and where my jeep stereo harness connects to the aftermarket stereo? Or does the constant 12v bypass the internal fusebox and hook up to the battery directly?

I'm going to try and trace the constant 12v wire (pink) back along the wiring harness and see what I find in the meantime. The only bummer is a lot of it way behind the dash, making finding a short difficult!

Do you think it would be easier to just bypass the faulty wire with a new wire and replace the connection?

Any information would be appreciated! Thanks for all the responses so far!

 

Sounds to me like you are doing your diligence to trace everything back...and still left with a head-scratcher... at least just for giggles at this point...have you thought about just bypassing the fuse box/block for a straight power connection to the battery?... I mean not as a solution...but to at least test if the HU will get power going direct? Might help you track down the root cause....just a thought.

 

Check out the 2 circled fuses in the PDC under the bonnet (hood).

 

New Developments!

I found a hot line bypassing the fusebox running straight from the battery to up under the dash (it was capped). I connected this line directly to the constant 12v wire for my head unit and the thing works!!! Thanks everyone!

As far as permanent solutions go, am I running a risk of damaging my HU/XJ wiring by using this new 12v constant line directly from my battery to my HU? Does the XJ stock 12v constant wire go through the fusebox? I could put in an inline fuse to protect my HU from shorting/blowing a fuse.

Thanks again for the help!

P.S. It looks like my rear left speaker is out but I'll take another look at that today.

 

I'll give this a look as well!

 

Looking more into that fuse and wire, it also powers the glove box light and the interior courtesy lights when you open the doors so if they work, it looks like there is an issue somewhere along the line leading to the radio.

If I'm reading the diagram right, there is nothing on the path between the radio and the splice where the lights and a few other systems connect, meaning that a broken wire or other fault will only affect the radio.

If you chose to use the wire from the battery, I'd suggest chopping the wire that runs into the original harness and cap it off so it's isolated. Certainly fuse the battery wire as close to the battery as you can and make sure the wire is of sufficient thickness (18 AWG being the original) and goes through a grommet as it passes through the bulkhead.