Car Stereos: Intermittent power loss 2001 Suburban radio, amp fuse, power fuse

Question
I am having a problem with my factory radio. For no apparent reason the radio will completely power cycle. Clock reset, power off, cd cycle eject. This can happen while driving or while sitting in my driveway. Vehicle on or off. I have switched out the radio with one from a salvage yard with the same symptoms. Also sometimes the radio will be fine for hours, driving or not. At others it will cycle several times in a single minute, driving or not.

My guess is a short in the battery connection, orange wire. I tried a meter on this wire sitting in the driveway to no avail as it showed constant voltage. My thought at this point is to run a wire from the back of one of the power outlets to the wire on the radio harness. And then cut the harness wire. However that still leaves me with a short somewhere. Which fuse would need to be pulled to disconnect that wire and what else is on that circuit?  Or should I try a different approach?

Thoughts

Answer
Hi Gil,

I agree with your guess on the source of your problem, and my fix would be exactly the one you've described.  The main power fuse for your radio should be located in the engine compartment fuse box; it's a 15-amp fuse and will be labeled "Radio".  To the best of my knowledge, this fuse doesn't supply any other vehicle circuit; but I don't have a schematic available.

Many of these vehicles will be equipped with a factory amplifier.  Sometimes it runs all the speakers, and sometimes it just runs the rear door speakers.  I'm not certain, but it's possible that the amplifier is powered from the same fuse as the head unit.  In this case, you might find that some or all of the speakers stop working when you remove the Radio fuse.  If this happens, you'll probably need to wire a new power source for the stock amplifier as well.

Hope this helps!

Brian