Car Stereos: power antenna, nissan altima, pioneer unit

Question
just installed a new pioneer radio in my 99 Nissan altima and the power antenna only goes up when U disconnect it from the back of the radio and goes down when U connect back into the radio

Answer
Hi Gary,

I've never seen that particular problem before.

Two things I can suggest:

First of all, if you're using an adapter harness to connect the Pioneer deck to the Nissan radio plug, the power antenna wire in the adapter harness is probably solid blue.  The Pioneer deck doesn't have a solid blue wire, so you'll need to connect the blue/white wire in the Pioneer plug to the blue wire in the adapter harness.  (If there's a blue/white wire in the adapter harness, leave it disconnected; it's only required if your Altima is equipped with a Bose audio system).

Second, there's no ground wire in the Nissan radio plug; the factory radio is grounded through the mounting brackets when it's screwed into the dash.  When you're working with the Pioneer unit out of the dash, you'll need to extend the Pioneer ground wire and fasten it to a metal brace in the dash cavity.  Otherwise the deck won't be grounded, and it will ground itself through the antenna shield when you plug in the antenna.  I can see this causing some odd problems.

Hope this helps!

Brian