05 Ion Radio Issue
 

Hello,
My son has an 05 Ion and I bought him a Navigation radio for his birthday, his old radio did not work. I have seen these radios sometimes go bad. I installed the radio and the new radio does not power. I have checked all fuses and they seem to be fine. I have power to the Yellow lead but no power to the larger Orange lead in the factory harness. Does anyone know what fuse the Orange wire is on? It is the basic 1 disc factory radio, I have the Metra harness for 04-05 Ion. If I tie both wires on the radio to the yellow wire in the harness the radio powers but will not turn off with the key. Thanks for any input.

So you have the 70-2012 GM 04-05 HARNESS attached to the factory radio harness?
What is the brand and model of the unit you're installing?

Bones---which fuses are the radio on?

Yes the Metra kit with factory harness. I checked all of the radio fuses in Engine bay and in cabin, all test good. No power to the Orange wire from factory harness, I believe it should always have 12V. Jensen VX7022 Head Unit

I tested the radio fuse and it was fine, took a wire and inserted it in the fuse slots and got 14.4V so I just got a fuse tap and ran a new wire off of the tap to the factory harness and it works fine now.

When an always hot wire in the harness is dead, it could be the wire is cut upstream, or there may be an issue on the back side if the fuse box where the wire gets its power---melted contacts, burned wire, etc.

Most cars run a dedicated wire from the battery to the external fuse box and from there to the internal fuse box. In the S-cars, it was labeled Instrument Panel) IPBATT, and was effectively a "straight run" from the battery to provide current to all the circuits located in the IP. The wiring then branches off from there on the back side of the fuse block and current gets distributed as needed to the different devices. Some have switches, some don't. For an "Always On)" wire to be dead, assuming it is receiving current from the IP BATT feedthru, I'd say the previous radio prob didn't work for the same reason. Did you trace it back (orange) to see if there were any INLINE fuses?

Anyways, if you simply ran the Orange wire off the non-ground side of the Radio fuse, realize that your new run is unfused unless you added an inline fuse to the setup, which I would strongly suggest for safety reasons