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Hello all,
Just got my first Civic, I really like it, it's a 2004 Saloon 1.4. A little rough around the edges but a good honest car. So I'm ironing out a few small issues as I go.

When I got her she had a Panasonic head unit, worked fine but none of the heater controls were illuminated, a google search explained the problem, the dimmer needed connecting from the head unit to the red and black wire on the Honda end. Sure enough they came back, but here's where it gets odd. The head unit now says "Ext-Mute" if the headlamps/sidelamps are turned off but when they're turned on the hifi works perfectly. I googled a lot about this but couldn't find the exact same issue. I'm stumped by it, currently the red/black honda wire is connected to the orange 'dimmer' wire on the back of the Panasonic (16 pin block). I'm assuming this orange cable must be incorrect but the only other free cables on the Panasonic harness is the blue (remote) wire and there's also a brown wire with a black stripe which has a rubber cap on it. I don't want to attempt to connect the black/red wire to this brown wire in case I fry everything.

I know it's recommended to search for answers online about this but I seem to be the only person to encounter it, I can't find any solutions at all. It's not the end of the world as I drive with my lights on anyway but I'm determined to have this car behaving as it should mostly because after just three days ownership I find it quite an endearing car.

Thanks in advance for your help

-Larry

 
Rep Power: 222

Redo the stereo wiring. Is the original stereo plug still there? There's adapter harnesses that connect directly to the factory plug and then you just colour match the wires. Leave the orange wire disconnected.

 
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Thanks very much for getting back to me. Yeah it has the honda-generic then generic-Panasonic harnesses in it, they haven't been modified at all until this evening, based on something I read online I tried cutting off the orange wire, sure enough the radio worked perfectly however that caused all the lighting in the heater control ***** to not work, reconnected the orange wire and the gauge illumination works again but the hifi stays on mute until the headlamps are turned on. If needs be I can live with that but ideally I'd like to make it function correctly

 
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Just managed to find a manual for the stereo, according to that the pioneer orange lead is an "external mute lead", it seems there is no dimmer pin on this panasonic unit at all and from what I gather I'd need one of them to have it all working as it should so perhaps live with what I have or find a better stereo maybe

 
Rep Power: 222

Could you try connecting that orange wire to ground?

 
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I was thinking of maybe doing that bit I read lots of stories about folk frying the dash by experimenting with this issue so I'm nervous to try anything at all at this stage

 
Rep Power: 222

Connecting it to ground wouldn't give you any issues

 
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I must fire up the multimeter tomorrow, I was hoping to get to the bottom of it today but the day got away from me