Car Stereos: car radio no sound, power antenna, chrysler vehicles

Question
i got a 01 sebring convertible it has a factory 4 disc changer and amp. the cd changer dont work nothing happening like no power going to it or something. well i put aftermarket cd player in it and when the radio is on all speakers work. when i go to put a cd in no sound at all. the cd player is reading the disc so that isnt the problem. On the factory radio there is the 2 wiring harness plugs 1 grey and 1 black, there is a 3rd plug with only 1 wire. it is purple/yellow and i bought a wiring harness adaptor for my cd player and that 1 purple/yellow plug dont go no where. can u help me out, and tell me what that wire does thanks alot  

Answer
Hi Nathan,

That purple/yellow wire is a vehicle data wire, and you'll definitely want to leave it strictly alone.  Your problem is actually related to the wiring of the black plug.

Your vehicle is equipped with a factory amplifier, and it's activated through the blue wire in the black plug of your wire harness.  When you installed your after-market head unit, you would naturally have connected the blue wire from the harness to the blue wire from the head unit.

However, the head unit's blue wire is meant to activate a power antenna, so it's only active when the tuner is selected.  When you switch to CD, the blue wire loses power--and so does the factory amp.

The solution is to disconnect the harness' blue wire from the head unit's blue wire, and connect it to the head unit's blue/white wire instead.  This will keep your factory amplifier working regardless of the source selection.

This is an extremely common problem in Chrysler vehicles with factory amplified systems, and it's all because the adapter harnesses are all made with blue wires.  Just pretend the blue wire in the adapter harness has a white stripe, and connect it to the same wire from the new deck.  This will solve your problem.

Hope this helps!

Brian