I bought a 98 Disco a couple weeks ago and the stereo didn't work, presumably due to water damage from leaks. I bought a new stereo and pulled out the old. It is a frightening mess of wires back there with multiple installs on top of each other and original wires frighteningly short and ct from their original connectors.

It looks like someone ran new speaker wires, bypassing the amp, so those should be no problem. That leaves me with the red, yellow, and black wires for power. Which wires should these connect to? I followed them back from the old stereo's harness and came up with an orange and green wire for the red, a purple wire for the yellow, and believe it or not a black for the black. But when I hook up the stereo it seems to get no power. And now various interior components no longer work, the dome lights, the clock....

Any help would be appreciated as to which wires to use and which fuse(s) I blew.

 

Please take advantage of the set of factory wiring and shop manuals below, called the RAVE.

 

I've tried using RAVE. I presume it's better on Windows than Mac. On Mac it's just a bunch of incomprehensibly named PDFs. The PDFs I've found with wiring diagrams don't list wire colors and aren't all that helpful since the wires have all been cut from their harness.

The behavior is weird, the interior lights don't work at all, but when they try to come on the clock turns off, then when you turn the interior lights off the clock comes back on, but is reset to 1:00. I've checked the fuses that I think are involved, and they all seem to work.

 

Since you're using a Mac, use reader. I find using my iPad the rave works best using iBooks. But listen to savanna, the reave is your best bet or, take it to a pro. There's lots to f up behind the dash.

 

Thanks for the Acrobat Reader tip. It is so much better than Preview for Rave. There are no links between (or within) PDFs when opened in Preview making it very hard to use.

 

The wire colors are denoted in the intro to the lectrical manual, as an example PINK = "K", BROWN = "N", BLACK = "B", so you'll need to see the wire color chart.

 

So, I've been working on it some more, but haven't really gotten anywhere. There was an interior lighting wire (red/brown) going to the old stereo's harness, but the stereo wasn't connected, and there was no jumper. I cut that wire to remove the old harness, but electrically that shouldn't matter.

I pulled the stereo from our other car which has the same connector as the new one to check if there was a problem with the stereo (in addition to the lamp/clock problem). The other stereo lights up as though its power is off, it won't turn on, and when I try to turn the interior lights on the stereo light goes out (same as the clock).

All the relevant fuses I've checked are fine. Not sure how what I did is affecting the interior lights this way nor how the interior lights are affecting the clock and stereo. I'm sure the answers are in Rave, I just don't know how to put these symptoms together with the electrical diagrams to solve it.

 

It sounds like you need to just completely remove all the wires that aren't stock wires, like any aftermarket add ons that someone else had in there before you got it. I'd start there then buy a Disco specific wiring harness for your truck, Here's the link to the part that I would get if i was in your situation. BUt then again I can't physically see the problem so this post may just be useless to you.
But for my disco which is a 96 I bought the wiring harness for the power, then just cut the wires from the front two speakers, ran those to the back where my amp is, and then replaced all the other speakers and ran those to the amp as well with my subs. sounds great. and as for the head unit, I had to build a faceplate so it would fit and work correctly, so if you ever need any tips on that I can help you out.
Good Luck

 

Let me get off work and I can help. I took out the stock factory radio and installed a new pioneer one last year. Took that out last week and installing a pop out video/touchscreen head unit.

 

Sweet, yeah I'd like to upgrade to a pop out touch screen here soon. I have a pop-out iPod dock installed in mine now.