Yeah, there's no "extra" ground, all the grounds have to be grounded. (Speaker negative is *not* a ground).

 

Right, I get that. What I am saying is I have all of the appropriate grounds connected as they should, but in extra precaution I had already made an "extra ground" like I added alittle pig tail of wiring that is tapped into the 3 grounds for the harness that I was going to ground to the body just as an extra ground, for some reason the factory grounds are not working, and only the extra one that I just decided to add is the only one that works.
Also, I went to my local audio install shop and I talked to a guy, who had actually JUST installed a similar system into a 03, and he said he had the exact same problem, he sold me this box, that is basically like what the pac harness does, however I just add it to my existing metra harness, it is made by pac and its basically just a 4 channel line converter, he said he installed one on the car they had and it fixed all of their problems, so basically its just a round about more expensive way to have a pac reom ns2. I am going to wire it in here in alittle bit to see if it does in fact help, the guy pretty much gaurenteed me that it would.

Now on to the lighting issue I am wondering if I do infact have a blown dimmer switch if thats what affecting the factory ground for the cd player, because I just cant make sense of why it would not be working, I am going to have the wiring apart again this evening and I am going to double check the grey (earth) wire.

 

Did you go through the fuses yet?

It's their job to blow before dimmer switches.

 

I went through them, however I did not test them with a multi meter, I got wrapped up in the cd player thing since I finally made some progress on that. Every fuse seems to be visually in tact, but who knows. I double checked the "mirror" fuse because I had read some people had similar problems when that one went out, I check the "meter" fuse and that seemed (visually) fine, so I kind of gave up on the fuses, I check some other ones, I read someone had this kind of issue when one of their tail lamp fuses went out, but they also lost their parking lights, All I have lost is the gauge lights, and the hvac (when the lights turn on) and the compass is completely gone whether the lights are on or not. If I were to look at the fsm would I be able to find say the ground wire and would it tell me if it is indeed connected to the dimmer switch? Reading those schematics is like reading russian to me ( I dont understand them)

 

Also one more question that I guess just got brought to my attention while I was trying to read the fsm, I have a red and yellow wire ( IIRC ) coming from the 10 pin plug, The crutchfeild website said it was pin number 9, which turns out on the metra side of the harness is empty, like there is no corresponding pin on that side. What exactly does that wire go to? In the FSM it does not list this wire, and to double check I even counted the wires they listed and there is only 9, the skip over #7, which I believe is this wire.
I am stumped. lol

 

Ok status update. So this red and yellow wire.... needed to be grounded. Now my dashlights work again... soooo relieved. But I am really confused because the metra harness had no wire for the this plug, but whatever lol. I cut the metra harness up and I'm just hard wiring the 10 pin plug. I've still got to plug in the in line converter and put it all back together. But wheew I'm relieved.

 

I don't even see a red/yellow wire in the service manual.

 

exactly! I only saw/ found it from looking at the schematic for the dimmer switch. I have a new issue now though that I think is from the deck. I plugged and wired everything in I have sound from the radio but no sound from the cd player... ugh wtf

 

You have the amplifier power signal and antenna amplifier power signal wires mixed up.

 

yea I forgot I have to get into one of the options on the cd player and change the remote antenna from antenna to power. Everything is working great now. I can't even turn it up past 20 something because its so loud hahah. Thanks for all the help man.

 

Glad it all worked out in the end, enjoy!