1996 chevy tahoe, stereo

I am new to the forum and just needed some help here!!

I just bought a 1996 chevy tahoe.  The person that had it before me had an aftermarket system in it, however; they took it out when they lost the vehile in a REPO.  Anyway..........they did leave the amp all the speaker wires and all that so basically they took the head unit and subs.  I took the aftermarket head unit out of my toyota so I had the wiring harness for that and I bought a tahoe wiring harness adapter.  I matcfhed all the wires and plugged the stereo in...it worked but it was real faint in the speakers and scratchy so I unplugged it and made sure the speaker wires were good to go.....when I plugged it back in...................NO POWER!  The head unit doesnt even power up.......any suggestions as to what it could be????  And how I can fix it???  Any help would be greatly appreciated......I have never done this before so.......I hopw I didnt mess anything up

Thanks in advance

The problem is we have no way of knowing what kind of damage or butcher job the previous owner did with the install and/or removing. Now since we can not measure voltage with our eyes...use a digital multi meter.

Make sure the red wire has at least 12V+ when the key is on...the yellow has at least 12V+ at all times..and the black shows a good ground. To check for a good ground the best way is to set the meter to ohms or continuity..touch one probe to the chassis of the deck..touch the other to a good known ground like metal in the dash or under the drivers side etc..You should get a reading as close to zero as possible..if suspect reground the deck.If anything else reads bad check the fuse(s) and connections.Take these readings at the harness where it plugs into the deck..thats where it needs to reach..you can trace back from there if you get a bad reading.

You should meter the speaker wires as well. Make sure all the "pairs" of speaker wires measure around 4ohms.(do not have them connected to the deck during this check or the readings will be affected)..too low is a potential short..too high you won't have alot of volume..if any.

Then place the meter on resistance or continuity and touch one of the probes to ground and hold it there. Take the other probe and touch it to each speaker wire one at a time and make sure you do not get any readings..if you have anything less then infinity from ground to a speaker wire there is a short and you can not connect that speaker to the deck until the short is found and repaired.

If the vehicle has a bose or any kind of factory amplifier, you won't get the proper readings at the dash so let us know if you think it might have one.

Once you do this post back with what you find and if it still does not work we can go from there.

another thing..you mention it has an aftwermarket amp..do you know if that was a dedicated sub amp only?..or the speakers from the doors going to it.?. If so thats something we need to deal with as well..the speaker wires may be atr the amps location which also could explain the problems as well as damage the deck or blow a fuse. There is a chance the amps output is feeding the speaker wires at the dash..and you sent that power INTO the decks speaker outputs..generally NOT a good thing to say the least.

Not saying this happened..just trying to exhaust all possibilities.

agreed..I know whenever you have an electronics device the instructions always say to disconnect the negative battery cable. That is not nessecary..it is a safty precaution so it is stated for liability purposes..not disconnecting the negative battery in itself will not cause any harm.

You just need to make sure when working with any live wires that you do not touch any of them to ground or to other wires..if you made a bad connection it would cause a blown fuse and/ or damage regardless once you reconnected the battery.

And I think you might not be experienced enough being that you can't tell if the amp was used for the door speakers just by looking at it. I respect people that want to do installs themselves and am also happy to see any girls doing it..we need more of you, believe me. But I would strongly suggest you have someone with experince help so this way you can learn without causing any more damage..and how to properly trouble shoot with a DMM and check fuses.

It must be cold up there..I live in south florida so I wouldn't know..lol But my dad took ill and lives up in NY so I need to move up there very soon for an unknown length of time. I guess I need to buy some winter gear..I only wear shorts and sandels 90% of the time.you don't really even need to wear a shirt here unless going into a store.

Welcome aboard and feel free to ask anything, anytime... we are more then happy to help.

THAT WAS IT!!!  I replaced the fuse and re-connected the HU and there was POWER!  It must have been that battery wire!   I am so glad that was it!  Thank you all so much for your help I really appreciate it.  When all is said and done, I will hopefully have no more prblems.  I will keep you posted though.  I still have to hook up the subs.

Alrighty then..9 out of 10 times it's a fuse or something really simple..things like basic deck installs and amp installs are really very simple in most cases..but most inexperiened DIY'ers just don't know how to troubleshoot so something as simple as a bad connection or blown fuse throughs them. But in time troubleshooting becomes cake work.

wow 3 feet of snow, no wonder you drive a truck. We had some serious hurricanes the last 2 years but so far were spared anything this year..a little rain thats it. But I expect when I am in NY to see a few blizzards..I can't wait..lol

Well if ya need any help with the subs give us a yell.