Hello all, first post here and I have a stupid electronics question. I bought my '92 C2500 a couple months ago. It had an aftermarket stereo in it but the seller removed it before selling leaving an empty bezel. He used an adapter to go from the factory harness to the aftermarket unit so it was easy to go back to stock. There was the aftermarket single DIN bezel in the middle of the dash and the Metra pocket where the factory head unit used to be.
All my previous experience with GM factory radios has been in B-bodies and '95 and newer C/K trucks, so I was surprised to learn that the 88-94 factory radio is actually a remote control head running the radio under the dash. I bought a nice factory control head on eBay and also a factory center dash pocket (with the vents) because I wasn't planning to do a tape deck. After figuring out that I needed the radio as well, I pulled one from a junkyard truck that I also pulled the whole dash out of (mine is shattered). Yesterday I put everything together and of course the radio did not work.
Everything from the factory harness on the truck plugged in to the top of the radio unit under the dash no problem. On my head unit I've got two sets of wires coming from it. One is in the black jacket harness with the gray connector which I'm guessing is the main harness and the other is a pair of wires that goes to a white connector. One of them is white and one of them is white with yellow stripe. For this connector, I can't find a place to plug it in on the radio unit. Also coming from the gray connector on the main harness from the control head I have a single white wire that terminates in a single pin connector and I can't find a place for it either. I'm thinking that's for +12VDC that keeps the clock on the control head set but its weird because I don't know where to plug it in.
I checked the fuses and everything is good there. So I'm wondering if there were differences in control heads and radios over the 88-94 production run that would prevent a newer control head from running an older radio or vice versa. Or maybe the head or radio is just bad.
I want to stick to a stock radio because I don't really care for aftermarket units and I'd like to keep this truck as stock as possible.
Thanks in advance for any advice and help.