i was installing a set of fog lights in my friends 02 sonoma and i used the red power wire to the deck as my switched 12 volt (same as i did in my car....no problems) and when i hooked everything up the lights did not come on. so i unhooked it and just spliced into the powerwire for the 12v outlet and that worked i connected the powerwire for the deck again and now the deck wont come on. but the red flashing l.e.d. is working. so doesnt that mean there is power to the deck....any help on this situation would be great. i'm lost at where the problem could be. the radio, dash, and illum fuses are all good so is the one on the back of the kenwood deck.

thanks guys, 93

 

So you used the stereo/cd player power to hook up the fog lights? Did you fuse the lights at all? Things like that are only made to draw so many amps, in that case that wire is made to drive the stereo and the fuse (for safety reasons) doesn't allow for the couple of extra amps to drive your lights. You probably blew the fuse. Yeah the outlet worked because that is made as a power source but thats probably still not a great idea cause when he goes to plug something in it might blow the fuse there.

Here's what I would do. Replace the fuse that you blew for the "deck" and leave it alone. Then wire the foglights straight to the battery (along with a fuse!) and a relay. The connect the switching poles of the relay to a low current source like the outlet and add the switch there.

 

everyfuse is still good. and those lights only draw 2 amps so i wasnt to worried about it. the relay is still good just the deck wont come on.

 

You sure? You might have damaged the deck then, make sure its not a fuse. I didn't say anything about a damaged relay I said you should use a relay like this:



Where the green wire goes to a low current source and the red goes to the battery.

 

why would i need a low current source if i'm running to the battery with the other...

 

It doesn't have to be low, but I'll explain how a relay works. There's a magnetic coil inside and when you give it power it makes a metal switch flip on by attracting it to the magnet.

Pins 86 and 85 control the coil. When the coil is magnetized current is allowed to flow between 30 and 87. So a current at 86-85 will throw a switch and turn on whatever is connected through 30-87. Basically this allows you to control a higher current device (foglights) using a low current source (like the deck or the cigarette lighter) while drawing barely any current. You don't have to use a low one, you could use a high one too, but thats just one of the advantages. And if you put a switch in between there, you can use a really low rate switch because there's not as much flow as at the foglights.

 

well thanks for that peice of info....but that doesnt help me figure out why the deck itself is not working.

 

Well at least you can maybe get the foglights working. I would take a voltmeter and make sure you have power at the wire you were originally trying to hook up to on the deck.

 

foglights work great just no rockoutness...test light says i do. but i didnt have a volt meter at the time. he doesnt seem to care as of now but i will have to track it down and see what the f is up

 

So you have the foglights connected to the 12v outlet now right? Yeah well the only thing other than a fuse I can think of is damage to the deck. Sometimes they have more than 1 fuse 2, there's usually at least 2 power wires.