Rep Power: 253

I have a small problem with the Alpine CDA-9856 install I did this past weekend. Everything pretty much went well. I got a wiring harness with my setup and simply had to hard wire that harness to the harness of the Alpine, using butt connectors. No problems at all. A monkey could do it. Only problem is, I have one wire left over on the Alpine harness.

The wire says "Dimmer" on it, but the guys at the audio shop told me that the "Illumination" wire is the one that will allow me to control the dimming of the Alpine with my car's lighting controls. Unfortunately, that isn't happening. When I dim the dashboard lights, the 9856 just does a very slight, one-time drop in illumination and that's it. It's still a bit too bright for my tastes and it's irking me.

All of the other wires matched up perfectly. I only had three, legit wires left over: "Power Antenna", "Amp", and "Interrupt" (for like cell phone hookups). However, that fourth one, the one marked "Dimmer", seems to be an orphan.

The guys at the audio shop swore that all of the wires would be used on my Alpine wiring harness, except for the three I listed. Why is this one left over? Should I have attached it to the "Illumination" wire on the third-party harness, instead of connecting the two "Illumination" wires together? Should I just give the "Dimmer" wire a test and see what happens?

Any help or insight would be appreciated. Thanks...

 
Rep Power: 0

DO NOT HOOK THAT WIRE UP AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!

it will blow all your dash lights

 
Rep Power: 0

only if you hook it up to the wrong wire not all factory cars use this..think about it when you use the dimmer in your car your dash guages get brighter or dimmer but your radio doesnt....that is because im guessing that honda doesnt use the dimmer for the radio, so you can not hook it up...for safety purposes tape off that wire...and the power anntenna wont be used because we have the antenna in the back windshield i believe so tape that one off to..basically tape of which ever wire you wont be using..if i were you and your were going to install an amp later on the road...extend the amp wire and tape it off that way you wont have to repull your headunit

 
Rep Power: 253

You mean to tell me that the amount my HU dims is as far as it'll go???

 
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nah..most likely at night when your lights are on it dims more....if you want go to your car....turn on you car let your radio turn on...then turn on your lights..it should dim

 
Rep Power: 384

yes when i had my alpine 9831 i think it was yes that one step down when you turn on your lights is all it will go down, its not like the cars where you can turn it all the way off

 
Rep Power: 301

i dont remember which dimmer wire to use..i had it hooked up but cut it off cuz it's better w/ the screen bright

as for the power antenna, you need to hook it up because 7th gens have a powered antenna...the antenna has an amp that needs power

 
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is that the antenna module..thats what it does ...well if it is 4 doors dont have this and i wonder why

 
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the antenna module is a signal amplifier. thats kinda weird sedans dont have them

 
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cool thanks...yeah the factory manual say we have one hmm i wonder if it is a tracking device j/k...i have no clue why we dont have one

 
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its a little box behind the plastic next to the rear window, u should have a wire in your factory harness for the power ant.

 
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The guys at the audio shop are right, you use the Illumination wire.. as far as the Dimmer wire is concerned.. just cap it off. If you hook it up to anything else, you will probably blow the fuse for your parking lights. Some cars use them, other cars don't. Also, I think the shop meant that you will use all the wires on the wire harness that comes with the Alpine.. not the Metra or Schoche or AI or Best Kits, or whatever brand you might have bought. So again, cap it off.. leave it as is.

 
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yeah he's right. i know that im no expert but... in high school me and a bunch of friends liked to think that we knew it all as far as decks went(wrong ) but we really just ended up going through a lot of stereos, but im sure alpine isnt really trying to have their deck go incognito, even if you hooked up the dimmer wire to the right dimmer source, im pretty sure you'll be dimming the power to the deck it self.

 
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^Dimming power to the power??? What?

 
Rep Power: 253

I've never heard of an antenna amp. I originally thought (and the shop later confirmed it) that the wire for "Power Antenna" was intended for the mechanized, retractable antennaes that are found on a lot of domestic vehicles. If it's to be used for a built-in, window antenna (like Honda's), then it must be something for the coupe, because the factory harness for the sedan doesn't have anything.

I think I'll just let it go. No, I'm not happy that an OEM radio can be dimmed down to almost nothing and an Alpine can't, but, oh well. Seems like it would be a feature that they'd have for a quality HU like Alpine's, but I guess not. Yeah, it may be one point against the 9856, but it's still 100% better than what I had. I can't believe how much better my stock speakers sound with this, too! Nice...

Anyways, it works fine, so I'll leave well enough alone. Thanks for the help. I appreciate it.

 
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check your settings for the deck, i know with my pioneer i can turn down the brightness and contrast if i wanted to.

 
Rep Power: 253

You know, I saw that, too. There is a feature on the 9856's menu called "Dimmer". It allows you to switch between "Auto" and "Manual", but I'll be damned if I could figure out how it made a difference. I'll pull the owner's manual out tonight and see if I can find out exactly what that does, unless someone here can tell me off the top of their head...

 
Rep Power: 306

The problem may be easily found. If your stereo has an illumination wire, look at the adapter harness that plugged into the stock harness. The wire you should have hooked up to on the Honda side is RED/BLK. The red wire should be taped up and never used to connect to a stereo.

The red wire is the dimmer control wire, which dims the lights. If you connected the stereo to this wire, the first time you turned on your lights, the dimmer control wire was sent to the stereos illumination switch. Most stereos do not dim, but rather have a transister which adjusts the lighting on the stereo. The problem is that this wire sends the wrong signal back and blows the dash clusters dimmer control circuit up.

The car also has an amplified antenna turn on. On the vehicle harness it is the yellow/grn wire. There probably is not a wire on the harness adaptor, as most do not have it. So you would have to tap into the wire on the vehicle harness to turn on the factory antenna with the blue wire from the aftermarket deck.

 
Rep Power: 253

That seems a bit over my head. I appreciate the help, but you have to understand that this is my first time ever installing a HU. I followed it by the book, exactly connecting the wires from the Alpine harness to the corresponding aftermarket harness. I took no short cuts and didn't even attempt to rig it up. I'm extremely wary of getting back in there and switching things around, given my lack of experience.

What I'll probably do is go to the audio shop this weekend and talk to the guys. If they say that this is something worth trying out, I'll give it a shot, especially since I have the entire dash still disassembled, in anticipation of the foglights I ordered. Otherwise, I think I'll leave well enough alone. Still, I honestly do appreciate the input and will definitely keep it in mind.

 
Rep Power: 0

thats my bust i read it to fast and thought he said the dimmer came from the car and that there was no connect in the harness, from car, to dim his deck and that if he jerry rigged the dimmer to the car it might drop power to his deck instead of dimeing the lights..... sorry maybe i should just stop posting, my wife is always trying to rush me off

 
Rep Power: 253

LOL!