Car Stereos: installing cd player, blown fuses, digital multimeter

Question
Hi I have a 98 lumina and I am changing the cd player out with a new one, and the people who installed the last one did a bad job,  you have to manually turn the cd player off when you turn the car off, I looked at how they had it wired and realized that they have the memory and power wire the yellow and red wire from the cd player hooked together to the red wire on the car, and from my experience you dont hook them together they should be seperated, but I cant find which wire should go where, because I see no wires that dont have anything hooked to them, what colors are the memory and power wire coming from the car itself?  Thanks.

Answer
Hi Matt,

The constant power wire in your factory radio harness should be orange; this needs to be connected to the yellow wire in the after-market harness.  The key-switched power wire is probably yellow.  This wire connects to your after-market head unit's red wire.  The trouble is, there's likely to be more than one yellow wire in your factory radio wiring; and several other colors are probably going to be repeated as well.

Your best bet is to get a digital multimeter so that you can test each wire and verify its function before connecting it to the new head unit wiring.  Also, it's very likely that you have one or more blown fuses in the vehicle's fuse box; if so, they'll need to be found and replaced before you can test the wires.  

Hope this helps!

Brian