4046HC electrical problem

Lionsfan6 · Apr 4, 2015

Hello everyone. I found myself in a bit of a situation today. I installed a radio in my 4046hc today and everything was great. I tried it out and everything worked great. I shut the tractor down, went in for dinner, came back out an hour later and when I started it up the radio didn't come on. I thought maybe a wire came loose but when I went to back the tractor up the parking brake alarm went off even though the brake was off. It continued to go off when i went forward as well. Its then that I noticed the dash panel lights weren't working and my gauges weren't working either. I stopped it, shut it down and checked every fuse in the cab wall and under the dash on the left side, all were fine. I checked under the hood, found one wire running along the bottom of the radiator screen that had been gnawed on by a mouse so I cut it and wire nutted it back together and still nothing. I checked up top under the canopy by didn't see any fuses up there, any ideas what the problem might be?

Rc4510 · Apr 5, 2015

Lionsfan6 said:
Hello everyone. I found myself in a bit of a situation today. I installed a radio in my 4046hc today and everything was great. I tried it out and everything worked great. I shut the tractor down, went in for dinner, came back out an hour later and when I started it up the radio didn't come on. I thought maybe a wire came loose but when I went to back the tractor up the parking brake alarm went off even though the brake was off. It continued to go off when i went forward as well. Its then that I noticed the dash panel lights weren't working and my gauges weren't working either. I stopped it, shut it down and checked every fuse in the cab wall and under the dash on the left side, all were fine. I checked under the hood, found one wire running along the bottom of the radiator screen that had been gnawed on by a mouse so I cut it and wire nutted it back together and still nothing. I checked up top under the canopy by didn't see any fuses up there, any ideas what the problem might be?

Double check your wires on radio and make sure everything is correct,check the grounds to make sure there good.hope you find the problem.let us know what you find

Lionsfan6 · Apr 5, 2015

I forgot to add, after I realized I had a problem I pulled the connections off the radio and the problems persisted. Makes me think I blew a fuse somewhere but i couldn't find one blown. Everything else still works; headlights, interior light, heater, etc.

Bluesteel · Apr 5, 2015

Did you get the radio from the dealer? LS has a specific wiring harness for the radio. Did you use the factory harness or splice all the wires? I think your issue is with the radio wiring or as you said possible a fuse somewhere. Are your gauges still out?

Lionsfan6 · Apr 5, 2015

Its not the dealer radio it's an aftermarket Boss radio. I had to install connectors on the stereo wires to individually plug into the LS connector. I looked through the manual and there isn't much on the electrical system so I rechecked all of my fuse boxes and found a blown fuse in the box inside the cab on the left of the dash. It was the hazard beacon fuse which I never would have guessed was related but after thinking about it all of the dash lights come on when you turn the key just like the radio so they must all tie in together somewhere. Someone smarter than me can probably elaborate. So now I have to figure out why the fuse blew and my first guess is I mixed up a couple wires so I'm off to pickup a voltmeter before I do anymore damage. Tracing the lines didn't work so well the first time. There are four speaker wires which are easy enough to trace but then there are three others which I assume are the continuos power, main, and ground. Two are located in the connector with the speaker wires and the third is independent. I'll be sure to post what wires are for what when I get it figured out.

Lionsfan6 · Apr 5, 2015

After disconnecting the radio and replacing the fuse everything worked normal. The three speaker wires still have me confused. The independent one is pink and shows a constant 12v on the multimeter. The black one in the connector with all the other wires shows as the negative when I test it, and the blue with a white stripe also in the connector doesn't register anything with the tractor off or on both in testing for a current or a ground. I thought that the independent one would be the constant leaving the blue and white as the main but no dice unless there is something I'm missing. I hooked I up as such anyways and no surprise, no power to the stereo. So then I took the stereo out and checked the connections on the back. Everything gave me some voltage or negative until I tested the main power which give me nothing. So now both the tractor main and the stereo main aren't showing capable of handling voltage...

Rc4510 · Apr 6, 2015

There is a wiring schematic somewhere in this forum and then cross it to radioe wires,speaker wires won't have battery voltage,I can't remember my colors.

George2615 · Apr 6, 2015

If you haven't figured it out by Friday I'll look at mine this weekend and post a pin out of the radio plug.

Lionsfan6 · Apr 6, 2015

double post.

Lionsfan6 · Apr 6, 2015

I appreciate it. I might have gotten it but I'm going to wait a few days to make sure. I found out that after I replaced the hazard lamp fuse it blew the audio fuse in the column fuse box which was good the first time I checked. That was why my blue wire with a white stripe in the harness (accessory power) wasn't getting juice. So I replaced that, confirmed that the pink independent wire was the constant, that the black wire in the harness was the ground, and the blue with white stripe wire in the harness was the accessory power. After I confirmed that I double checked my speaker wires to make sure I was going hot to hot by checking the speaker mount which shows the + and - and found that the solid green wire on the right speaker is hot with the light green with a red stripe being the negative and the blue with red stripe was the hot and the white with blue stripe was the negative for the left speaker. I double checked that against the radio manual to make sure i was tying hot to hot and negative to negative with the wires in the radio harness and everything looked good. So i wired it all back up assured that i had done my due diligence, fired it up and all was well. Until i shut it off and fired it back up when it gave me a different issue, all of the warnings on the dash lit up. So i shut it off again, went up and disconnected the power antennae wire from the radio that i read to splice into the main power thinking that was literally the only thing i wasnt able to check with my multimeter. I clipped that wire turned the key and found that my dash panel lights were out again. So i replaced the hazard lamp fuse mentioned before turned it on and everything including the radio worked. I turned the tractor off half expecting the fuse to be blown again but when i turned it back on everythng was working to include the radio. So i turned it off and on several more times and all was good. Ill wait a while longer before i really trust it but ill be glad if that power antennae wire was the issue. Maybe its different with car audio systems, thats where i read it. One other thing was that the tractor only has two speakers and cars have four so i tied in the front and rear for the right together from the stereo and the same for the left when i pluggd them into the tractor speaker harness. If i blow another fuse that will be my last thing to try.