My daughter had an Alpine head unit professionally installed in her Cavalier and since then the light behind the odometer has not worked. The installer sent her to the chev dealer who in turn sent her to another car audio shop where they wanted to sell her a $130 harness. The original installer did tell my daughter that her chimes for door ajar and lights left on would not work with the new Alpine installed. Apparently they would if you put in the $130 dollar harness but would any of this affect the light for the odometer? Also the second shop told my daughter that without the special harness a code reader would not be able to diagnose any engine problems. It would just come up with a radio fault. Any body have any idea if this is true? Any help with this situation would be greatly appreciated.
u shouldnt ahve to buy a 130$ harness go to like a car install place and uy an adapter they are 20$ for gm vehicles and it works like a stock radio plug in i ought mine from best buy
check dash light fuse, that harness they are talking about is for audible and door chime warnings, but th harness needed for that car is a relocation harness
The installer did use a gm specific harness when he installed the Alpine. Ty do you know if by not using the harness that would enable the audibles that a code reader would not be able to access any engine codes? I did check the fuses and they are ok. The light is no real big deal, she can still see the odometer numbers in the day time. Thanks for the responses guys.
You dont have to relocate the headunit. Anyone who tells you that doesn't know what they are doing or talking about. metra GMRC01 harness lets you keep your chimes but if you dont care about that then you can get a $20 harness and that's fine which is what they did. When they put the front plate back on which goes on top of the cluster they might of hit the light piece out of place. If you put it on carefully you will have your light still. Mine lights up but i've had to fool with taking it off and on again. Once you get it to light up and put everything in place, hopefully you wont need to take the cluster plate off again or you'll have to fool with it again. If the fuse was broken then none of the guages would be working because that whole cluster has one fuse. if and when you do that make sure ot check the cigarette lighter fuse it's a 10V that tends to blow alot when removing and putting the plte back on. hope this helped.
I had an 02 Cavalier and was forced to buy a $100 harness, the only other option was a $50 harness that would relocate the stock head unit to the trunk, in order to put my after market in. I don't know about not being able to read the engine codes, but Audio Express said that without it the chimes and security system wouldn't work if I had just spliced into everything. But that may all be the difference in the year of the cars.
the only thing you lose are the chimes. Your security system is a different system. If your alarm system isn't working check your fuse box on the drivers side and your fuse might have blown during install. I know i blew quite a bit of fuses doing my install. If they did it right it shouldn't of affected the alarm system at all