first off im a 16 year old kid with little experience. ive done a few installs before but not very many. i have a single bl 15 on a sundown sae-1200d.

but anyways my friend has a 1998 dodoge dakota and i was attempting to put a brand new kenwood head unit in it. and when i was wiring the after market harness to the head unit harness there were some weird wires. theres two harnesses to wire, one has 3 of 4 speakers and the remote wire on it and the other has power, ignition, illumination, dimmer, right front negative, amplifier ground, and mute.

there is no wire from after market harness for left front negative but the one that says amp ground is the same color (white and black)

so i plugged it all in and i wired HU ground to white and black wire that said amp ground, turned the key radio didnt light up or anything. also on the back of the factory HU the was a connector that was clipped to the metal sheild on the back of it that said amp. im guessing it was a ground. so i took the groundwire from the kenwood HU harness and and tryed grounding it to the clip on the back of the factory HU. still nothing. so i just put the factory HU back in and i am going to hook the kenwood up to my battery later and see if it lights up to make sure its not bad.

so can anyone please help me with this problem, my friends doesnt want to spend 50 bucks at best buy to have it installed. thanks

Try wiring the HU ground to a bare metal spot somewhere instead of to that "Amp ground" on the harness and see if that works. Usually on an aftermarket harness though there should be a black wire to ground the HU to.

Try wiring the HU ground to a bare metal spot somewhere instead of to that "Amp ground" on the harness and see if that works. Usually on an aftermarket harness though there should be a black wire to ground the HU to.

thanks for replying. im looking at the harness and the only type of ground is that blck and white wire that says amplifier ground? im guessing the truck has some kind of factory amp in it somewhere?

i just hard wired the radio to my battery and it works fine so i am think im going to have to find somewhere to ground it in the truck, but it will probably have to be a few feet long because everything around the HU is plastic. does it matter how long the ground wire from the kenwood is?

Could be. In some of those cases I've seen that you have to run a wire from the fuse panel to the HU power to bypass the factory amp to get the unit to power on and off.

Just make sure the wire is sufficient in size and you'll be fine.

how would i know where to put the the power wire on the fuse panel. and also i did a 98 ford explorer before and it had a factory amp and the HU turned on but the door speakers wouldnt work at all just the subs. so if anyone has had this problem before let me know. thanks for the help.

Where did you get the wiring harness from?