robbie374

I installed a new stereo head unit in my 2001 Civic this past weekend, a Kenwood KDC-BT958HD, and I have found the screen to be very dim, nigh unreadable in daylight, even on a stormy, cloudy day.

Of the two illumination or dimmer wires existing in my car (red and red/black), I connected the one which aligned with the orange wire on my wiring harness to the orange/white wire on my stereo. I did not connect the wiring harness's orange/white wire to anything.

I was considering connecting the two orange/whites instead to see if it makes a different, but I gather from reading these forums that that is a very bad idea because things will get overloaded or shorted.

I have also seen a suggestion mentioned of leaving both orange and orange/white disconnected, hence connecting nothing to the stereo "ILLUMI" wire, but I haven't read the reasoning for this.

Given that this is a relatively top-of-the-line single-din stereo, I presume that it ought to be readable between dawn and dusk and that my installation has gone astray somewhere.

Which wires should I (or should I not) connect so that my stereo lights up properly?

Thanks for your help! I've never done any of this sort of thing before.

ezone

Right.
Unhook it.
Red/black is 12v+ whenever the lights are on.

The car uses electronics to control a variable negative to adjust the dash light brightness (red wire),
and IIRC most aftermarket stereos want a variable positive to control their illumination.

This is NOT compatible and many people burn a circuit trace right out of the gauge cluster circuit board when they hook up the illumination wires in an adapter plug..

I'm not a car stereo junkie anymore, but most I have seen ran the radio illumination at max brightness if nothing is connected to tell it otherwise.
Check the documentation (papers) on yours?
Maybe there is a user setting for changing the brightness on the display?




HTH?

robbie374

Thanks for your reply!

Tonight I disconnected the orange to orange/white connection, so the BT958HD's Illum orange/white wire is not connected to anything.


There was no change in brightness.


As far as I can tell from exploration and the manual, there is no brightness setting for the head unit, only dimmer settings which are all turned off.


More thoughts?

ezone

Googled, I found the display settings info in section 13-6, #3 but I didn't find install instructions or a wire diagram.

TiggerDX

iTrader: (1)

So there are several things you can try.
Have you changed the color of the text yet? Some of the colors can be very difficult to read.
Make sure Display Dimmer is set to off (I believe you have done this already) [The Illumi Dimmer is for the keys and not the display so set the correct one]
Adjust the contrast. It might be set to 10. Try 20 or higher.
Change the Disp NEGA/POSI. This may help. You might have to re-adjust the contrast after you change that setting.

Lastly you might need to set it to one line display instead of 2 or 3. Not ideal but may make it more readable.

Source Kenwood Manual