[Tao Jones]

Ok so I've mentioned this in another thread about the Eclipse CD5030. I installed it last week and all is working. Even got the built in steering controls to work. It wasn't programming at first but found out how to retain the settings. So it's working... except when I first turn the stereo on the buttons on the faceplate doesn't respond. No guide tones.. nothing. But the volume dial works and the steering controls work.

It takes about 10 minutes for the radio to be on and then the buttons start to respond. But not with every press... seems like the radio slowly lets the buttons come back to life.. then every press, every button responds.

I took the radio out the other day to check the wiring. So I unhooked the Eclipse steering brown/black wire from the honda factory green/red wire. Turn the radio on and the buttons on the faceplate immediately responds like it's supposed to. Hooked the wires back up and back to no response.

A little info on my wiring. All connections are straight forward from metra to eclipse harness. As mentioned above the Eclipse steering brown/black wire is connected to the Honda green/red wire. The Honda steering ground brown wire is connected to the Honda black ground wire. The only thing different was that I snipped the eclipse ground terminal so that I can solder it to the metra ground.

I spliced three blue wires together. Metra - Blue/*********** antenna, Eclipse - blue Antenna power supply and the aftermarket antenna adapter blue wire.

Like I said everything works except for the faceplate button for the first 10 minutes. I have the steering control mode button programmed so atleast I can switch the source to my iphone and start listening to music when I first start the car.

I called Eclipse tech support and they have no idea why it's doing this. I can accept it if it's a compatibility issue. But if you guys have an suggestions to get this working that would great.



Thanks!

 

[Tao Jones]

Ok so no suggestions. But how about this? Would it make a difference if I was to connect the Honda brown (steering ground) wire to the ground (black) at the eclipse harness BEFORE the metra harness?

OR would it make a difference if I was to just not connect the eclipse ground (black) to the metra harness and use the forked connector and screw it into the chassis? And then connect the honda brown (steering ground) to it?

Seems like the grounding does make a difference because before, I had the Eclipse brown/black wire connected to the Honda green/red wire and the Eclipse brown ground wire to the honda brown (steering ground) wire.... the steering control didn't work but the faceplace buttons responded. As soon as I hooked the honda brown (steering ground) to the honda black ground (connected after the honda harness) the steering worked but the faceplate buttons didn't respond.

The eclipse remote is acting the same way... it won't respond either just like the faceplate buttons.


If none of this is possible then I guess I will have to buy the PAC SWI ECL2...

 

[Tao Jones]

Oh well.. it didn't make a difference. (Even with the replacement unit) Was hoping to get some suggestions. I'm gonna call Eclipse tech support again tomorrow. The first guy I spoke with was really helpful.. the second guy didn't seem like he wanted to help. Hopefully I'll get the first guy.

Really don't want to the buy the PAC adapter, that's kind of why I went with the CD5030 so I wouldn't have to. Who's to say the adapter will solve this issue anyways? Might just return everything and wait for the Kenwood X994 if a steering wheel adapter is required for the CD5030.


But hey ! Other than the one issue I really do like this deck. The 7 Band parametric EQ and crossovers are really nice. The controls are really straight forward and easy to use.

 

[texaselement]

I'm not a big fan of the PAC unit anyways. I've already went thru 2 of them. I'm gonna buy a 3rd one, and hope it works for a while. They work great at first, then I lose steering wheel controls. When I try to reprogram, it doesn't take :|

 

[Tao Jones]

See that's what I was afraid of also. Anyways I got it to kind of work... heh. I was googling all over and couldn't find a similar issue but ran into the Civic 8th Gen forum where somebody got their 5030 steering control to work based on the schematics posted on that forum. So I checked our schematics here on this forum and noticed that 10k ohm is no button pressed. (I think.. hehe)
I spoke with tech support at PAC (which were very helpful even though I wasn't a customer) and he said that it sounds like an issue where the Eclipse deck might be receiving signal from the steering wheel control which it inteprates as a button being pressed hence disabling the faceplate buttons. However he had no idea why the faceplate's buttons slowly responds to its normal state after a period of 10-15 mins. He assured me that the PAC module would be able to integrate and the supplied resistors will get it working.
So I looked at the schematic again and thought ... why not just got buy a 10k resistor and see what happens. I tied it in between the Eclipse's brown and Honda's green/red. Nope .. that's not it. For the heck of it I had a 1k resistor laying around so I decided to try that.

Real quick : As I was running these test... as soon as I turn the radio I first check to see if the steering controls still work by pressing vol up and down. If it works cool, I move on to the faceplate buttons.

Soooo.... with the 1k resistor, I turn on the radio... steering controls work.. cool. I press a faceplate button and bam! it works! I press another one! Nope! Not working.. I thought to myself: Maybe it was the resistance from the steering controls. I start to press the vol up and down and hit a faceplate button .. it works again! After a couple of seconds of doing this all the buttons work.

Long story short, I double checked to see if that's the case with the 10k resistor and with no resistor. Nope, the faceplate won't respond at all. With the 1k resistor in, the faceplate responds but only when the steering controls are being pressed. I can live with this. Atleast now I don't have to wait 10-15 min. Now the annoyance is that when I first get into the car I have to press those steering controls before the faceplate fully responds. Takes about 5 min or less now for the buttons to come back. Which is weird because when I was first experimenting with it it only took about 2-3 seconds. Oh well.. if I keep this HU, maybe in the spring I'll experiement with other resistors.