Ok guys, So I have a customer coming in to my shop that needs to get a working power antenna in his 1980 chevy corvette. It had an aftermarket originally and it was hood installed without a doubt. What happened was the radio died and so did the power antenna. He bought a new radio and had our shop put the radio in. I currently work as an MECP certified tech at best buy. So new radio goes in without too much of an issue. I ran new speaker wire and power ground and what not, soldered and heat shrinked it all and now it looks great and the radio works great. Downside was when it was at my shop he had no power antenna at all. So i informed the custy that we will hook it up but no real gaurantees since there may be further problems. Well he put in a new power antenna that he got direct from GM and guess what it doesn't work.
So I had it in the shop an hour before close tonight and here's what I determined. The wiring that I did was fine and I verified much the same as i did on original install that the relay for the power antenna is activated by the radio. Radio is a kenwood just so everyone knows. The downside is still no power antenna working. There is a relay that controls the power antenna functions and it is underneath the jack storage box.
From what I can tell the relay has a total of six wires being connected to it. This relay does not appear to be like a standard SPDT relay in looks but functionality wise it is the same. There are three wires on one plug that I will call the input side.
It contains an Orange wire which I tested has no voltage to it at all as of now
A yellow wire which is what is connected to the power antenna trigger of the radio
and a black wire which is ground.
There is then an "output" side of the relay that goes to the power antenna three wires again
Green, this tested as continuous to ground with no voltage.
A gray wire which tested as no voltage with relay active or not and it does not test continuous with the orange wire with relay active or not.
A white wire which tests as no voltage relay active or not, this wire tests continuous with the orange wire when relay is non active and is not continuous with relay active
So my main question here is can anyone inform me what the proper conditions for these wires will be to make the antenna function properly. My assumption is that the gray wire should be connected to constant power as well as the orange wire and the green is ground. I tried this with one amp fuses inline from the battery since the battery is only six inches from this relay and all that would happen is popped fuses. Now I am fully aware it probably takes more than one amp to power the antenna but until I'm sure that's what I need to do I'm not willing to just guess. For all I know the relay may be bad but I can not online or anywhere find the wiring diagram for this power antenna relay.. GM's factory manuals only show what the wiring plugs into not the statuses. IF anyone has any tips please pass them forward. This customer is a very awesome person and I really wanna help them out. Now I did check all fuses and they test good but for all I know it may be missing fuses once again no real diagrams so I don't know nor is there labeling so yea.
2008 Dodge Ram 1500
MECP Certified Advanced Installer CEA 191700