I recently bought a JVC KD-SX8250 reciever for my 1997 F250. I bought the truck with no radio, but the previous owner left the old wiring from the cd player he had in it.

So, I wired it up to the cd player. All colors matched up (with the exception of one solid blue wire that didn't have a match for some reason).

Now I can't get it to turn on. It will accept CD's, and when I press the "DISP" button, the faceplate illuminates briefly and turns off (I'm guessing this is normal operation.) However, I can't seem to get the thing to turn on or play CD's or anything.. Any suggestions?

No, I don't have an owner's manual, it was a craigslist buy.

 

Not too hard to find one:
- http://books.jvcservice.com/booklist...odel=KD-SX8250

 

you mean to say that you got the wiring harness from your head unit with the cragslist purchase and the previous owner of your vehicle left the harness adapter plugged into the harness, or did he cut off the stock harness clip inside your dash and leave a bunch of wires? Post a picture of the rat's nest please so I can wrap my mind around what you're working with. Oftentimes the factory will not use standard colored wires and if you have a clipped harness its more than likely that the colors will not correspond with the stereo harness' wires.