Driving down the road in your car, you suddenly realize that there is no sound coming from your radio! You can’t hear anything but the wind outside.
It’s not just annoying because it’s so quiet; you’re also worried about spending the repair fee for your broken stereo. What could be wrong?
Pioneer has built a reputation for producing high-quality radios for cars, so when something goes wrong with one of their electronic devices it can be frustrating to try and figure out what went wrong. Luckily for our readers, we have all the answers they need right here in this blog post!
Check Fuses
If the radio won’t turn on, it may be because there is no power coming through to the device. A common reason for this is that a fuse has blown somewhere in your car’s electrical system. To check if this is what happened, pop open your fuse box and find the radio fuse.
Find your vehicle’s owner’s manual to find the right fuse to check. If you don’t have access to the owner’s manual, simply search on the internet with your car’s make, year, and model to find it.
If you find out that the fuse is blown out, you can replace it quite easily. Make sure you replace a 7.5 amp fuse with a 7.5 amp one, and a 15 amp one with a 15 amp fuse.
Check the Wires
If the fuse is perfectly fine and still there is nothing happening on your radio after the ignition, then the first thing to check is the connectivity. Three important wires are needed to be properly connected for a pioneer stereo to work, i.e. ground, constant, and ignition wire.
Faulty connection in any of these wires can result in pioneer radio not turning on issue. To check this, you need to remove the radio from the dashboard and access the back of the device.
Check if any wire is loose or completely disconnected. If you see anything like that, carefully connect the wires and check if the problem goes away or not.
In case the problem still persists or no loose wire is there, you’ll need a multimeter that can check DC volt. Connect the black probe to the ground wire and the red probe to the constant wire. It should show a reading of 12 volts. If that doesn’t show anything, then there may have some issue with the power supply to the stereo system.
If that’s showing a good reading, move the red probe to the ignition wire and ignite the car engine. Check now to see if the radio showing 12 volts. If not, then there is an issue with the ignition wire.
Ensure Good Ground
From our experience, we saw that despite a good reading on the multimeter, things can still not work due to bad ground. You may try removing the ground wire from the back of the device and connecting it to a screw placed on a big chunk of metal on your car. In many cases, this will solve your issue.
Pioneer Stereo Has Gone Bad
If after checking all the above things, you still see that nothing is working on your pioneer stereo system. You may have to admit defeat and replace it with a new one from Pioneer parts online store.
However, when we do things ourselves for the first time, we may miss something in the process. For this reason, I recommend consulting with an authorized pioneer service center to double-check if the system is dead or you can get away with a minor fix.
Activated Anti-theft Mode
Due to a wiring issue, battery change, or for some unknown reason, a stereo system can activate the anti-theft mode. In this state, you need to find the user manual that came with your device. The manual should have the security code to turn off the protect mode.
In some older models, hard resetting the pioneer radio can also work to deactivate the anti-theft mode.
Conclusion
If you find that your pioneer car stereo is not working, there are a number of things to check before assuming the system is dead.
From our experience, we recommend checking your fuse box first and replacing any blown-out fuses with new ones. If all else fails, consult an authorized service center for help finding more possible solutions!