GhostPath

Well, since my last one died, I've been looking for another. I found a 90 SE 4x4 at a local dealer. I think this may be a good candidate - if you guys wouldn't mind taking a look at it and pointing out anything you see that's wrong with it, I'd appreciate it. http://www.dallasdrivers.org/gallery/v/ran...s/westdallaspf/

From what I'm reading about your Alpine, the orange and orange/white wires should be taped off, both separate from each other, in your installation. What do you mean about "removing all the wires and clips?"

OK, you have the Scosche or Metra adapter there. The "other wiring harness" is the main one for the power, lighting, amp control, and front speakers. They forgot to tape/cover up the cut wire ends on the orange wires. Chances are that they're contacting metal when you put the stereo back in the car, and when you turn the lights on, POOF, the fuse goes. Tape up all the cut and exposed ends you've got there and that should solve the problem.

Not clear enough to decipher the wires by color/markings - what head unit are you running? Check for the orange/orange and white wire in the harness - what are they connected to? OK, then one of your orange wires is hooked up wrong. Time to grab a multimeter.

Pics: Here's my Pioneer Premier DEH-P480MP, removed from my now-departed Pathfinder: Note that the Pioneer-supplied harness is spliced to the Metra adapter. Note that a similar adapter is now sold at WalMart (enormous American store chain) for $11, as someone has pointed out to me. Walmarts are everywhere here. On one end is the Pioneer plug. Look at what's on the other end: Yup, the appropriate plug for the original factory harness. You plug this end right into the truck.

Something in the stereo or the stereo harness is either shorting out or not connected properly.

I was able to track down and obtain one for $13 within an hour of conceiving the desire to have one. Over here, one standard for installing stereos in cars is to twist the bare wire ends together, and then crimp them together to keep them from unravelling. This is how most people do it. You then have to cut the crimp off when you remove it. Almost nobody solders, especially the original car's wiring, because usually it's in close proximity to plastic trim pieces. I was responding to your specific points and leaving point 3 out of it. If your stock wiring is cut too short, you then have to take the whole dash apart and either repair or replace the wiring harness. Good luck with that. Too bad, pics are coming.

1. They're everywhere here. Certainly no more than an hour away in a big city area. 2. It does NOT come with plugs for the stock connector. And what if you want another head unit from another maker? Yup, gotta trim back the already cut factory harness again. Oh, wait, you've already done it three times and now it's too short to take another one... ooops. 4. As usual, you are wrong. The adapter has the specific plug to plug into the original wiring harness. You still only make one set of splices. It's just that if you need to do it again for another unit or because you screwed up, you're dealing with the adaptor and not the irreplacable stock wiring. I'll go get a pic of the one on my Pioneer to show you how it's done. Should also mention that in another life I was a stereo installer and I made LOTS of money off of fixing the typical amateur idiocy when it fell apart on the owner. Installing a stereo properly isn't rocket science.

Any stereo shop should have or be able to get one. I got mine for $13 from a local electronics shop, Fry's. They're like $9 on eBay. The difference is that it converts the factory wiring from the Nissan colors to the standard wire colors for aftermarket stereos. Then all you have to do is connect like to like. If you screw it up, you can just trim the adapter harness and do it over, rather than trying to trim the original factory wire, which may then be too short. If you change head units, you just unplug it from the factory harness, cut the old head unit's splices off, then splice the new head unit's on. Finally, if you think you're getting an intermittent from a bad splice, you can pull the adapter harness out and ring it out, rather than try to ring out the hacked up factory one.

Yeah, it may set some error codes related to the transmission (since you don't have the automatic transmission controller in your truck, obviously the ECU won't be able to talk to it), but you can ignore them. The ECU certainly won't care about it in terms of running the engine.

It could be a Army Pathfinder sticker - i.e., a sticker promoting a unit of the US Army. Alternately, someone could have been playing games with stickers back in the 80s. For some reason, during the late 80s, people liked putting Pathfinder stickers on 4Runners, and vice versa.

Unless you've come across a custom job, what you have there sounds like a *Toyota* 4Runner with a 22RE engine.

This: http://retailer.installationexcellence.com...;productid=1042 It lets you install a stereo into a car or truck without butchering the original wiring connectors. Also makes it harder to make mistakes in wiring. Our trucks are common enough that there is no excuse to NOT be using one of these.

The wire for "lighting" of the head unit display is grounding out. You may have wired it incorrectly or left it disconnected. You did use a wiring adapter kit, right?

You need to adjust or replace one of your door switches.

It's "Citizens Band".

I'm in Texas. I don't really have time to swap the engine in the thing (plus it's a billion degrees out there). I think I'm going to buy another PF and sell this one.

Some of you may recall that I bought my 93 as a project, missing a lot of parts. Got it all reassembled, got it all buttoned back up, and it ran. Poorly at first, then better and finally well. After about 20 minutes of messing around, it rattled, clanked, and died. And the engine won't rotate forward any more. I'm guessing I got the wonderful camshaft shear problem, because I know I didn't make any mistakes on the timing belt change, and it wasn't acting weird right up until it went poof. I'd even turned the engine over by hand one hundred times to make sure it didn't have a problem. I'm just about out of time to play with this. Unless someone local happens to have a working engine real cheap and can help me install it ASAP, the truck (or the remains) is up for sale - my landlord is already upset about my Jag scattering its transmission out front yesterday.

You can burn your hand on a condensor in a car set to max cool on a 85 degree day, so he's right. There's a lot more heat than you might think in a vehicle. That said, have you replaced your fan clutch in a while? That might be slipping, and that will reduce the cooling airflow through the nose of the car.

How were you trying to turn the engine over? You can't do it with a standard 3/8" ratchet unless you're really strong - try a breaker bar. Of course, the timing belt may be gone - dismantle the top timing cover and look.

Sounds like your coolant temp sensor has expired.

Just as a follow up to this - Harbor Freight no longer sells the above tool.

See the many timing belt change threads on this board. In short - thermostat, water pump, crankshaft gear, both woodruff keys, crank seal, cam seals.

He could also have had the pulleys separate from the harmonic balancer due to the rubber disintegrating.

You are climbing a hill offroad in your manual-trans truck, you do something stupid and you accidentally stall the engine. You manage to catch the truck with the brakes. You are in a position where if you slip the clutch and brakes, you're going to roll back down the hill, probably into the people or trees at the bottom. Instead of trying the three-footed dance, you can simply leave the truck in gear, hit the interlock switch, and use the starter to crawl the truck up the rest of the way - or even get it to start in gear and drive up the rest of the way normally.