QuestionHi Mark, Thanks so much!!! I found all three!! I'm a little concerned that the pioneer wiring harness has a smaller red(positive) wire. It's not the same size as the one in my car. The only large wires on it are yellow and black. Can I still hook them together or will a current overload happen. If I can't connect them then what do I need to purchase in order to hook the pioneer up?
Once again, thank you so much for your time! You really are awesome!
Deborah
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Hi Mark,
I now have the meter.
Thanks, Deborah
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Hi Mark,
Someone has stolen my stereo which was installed in my 91 Camry a year ago. A friend gave me a used Pioneer but when I went to hook it up I noticed that the wires left dangling in my car out-number the wires in the connector for the Pioneer. Best Buy installed my stereo and used colors(wires) that don't make any sense to me. There are fifteen wires in all- The Pioneer wire harness has only 12 wires(sets of white,grey(1grey has black stripe),purple,& green then 1 red,blue w/white stripe,yellow,& black(the yellow and black being thicker gauge)----
I was really puzzled when I noticed the strange colors of wires they (Best Buy)used. After searching around in my car I came across the cut wire harness which contained 10 wires(1 pale green,1 dark blue,1 pink,1 purple,1 brown(thicker gauge),1 black & red striped,1 pink w/grey stripe,1 grey,1 dark green,& 1 blue w/yellow stripe)...boy that was an earfull! So, there are still 5 wires of which 3 are thicker gauge(red,black,yellow)which I realise are the positive,ground,and remote? Can you help me make any sense of which wire is which? Why wouldn't the yellow black and red be in the harness? And what's up with the two extra wires that I haven't named? Any help you could give me in this matter would be most appreciated.
Sincerely, Deborah
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well basically the way I like to do this is to put a meter on it and that will tell you everything. sometimes you can find wiring codes but if someone has spliced on other wires you cant rely on that anymore. Do us both a favor and get a meter, they're only $18 at walmart or homedepot. I'll be happy to show you how to use it and we'll figure out the wires. that way you're sure which wire is which and theres no guessing and possiblity of blowing anything.
The wire colors you told me for the pioneer are all industry standard colors so I know what they all are. it'll be easy once we use the meter. write me back when you get one.
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ok, here's a post I sent a few other people. let me know if it helps. the first part is to identify the 3 power wires. once you get that we'll do the speaker wires ok?
For a lot of these tests it helps to have a friend holding one wire lead of the meter tight against bare metal of the car. it has to be bare, unpainted metal, you can scratch a small part inside a door jam to get some metal where noone will see it. Its very important not to let the wires touch each other so be careful.
First we're going to search for the ground wire.
Set your meter to DC volts, with the wires hanging out you should find a black one or the darkest one. This should be your ground. Touch one wire from the meter here (it doesn’t matter which one) and touch the other end to a solid, metal, unpainted part of the car (usually the door hinges or bolts inside the door work well. The meter should read 0 volts on many wires, and 12 volts or so on 1 or 2 others, if so move on, if not let me know.
There should be a setting on your meter that makes it beep when the 2 meter leads are touched together. Put it on this setting and touch one lead of the meter to the body of the car like before, now touch the other lead of the meter to the wires we tested before that showed 0 volts. ONE of these wires should make your meter beep, if so congratulations! You found the ground! If not repeat the above process on more of the darkest wires until you find one that it does. if you find a bunch, let me know, thats not right.
Assuming you've found your ground, tag it with masking tape with a - or neg or ground written on it or some kind of label so we know what it is.
Next we're going to try to find constant positive. WITH THE KEY OUT OF THE CAR, Set your meter for DC V again. And put the black lead from the meter on the ground wire we found before. Again, helps to have a friend hold the ground wires together while you probe others. Put the other lead from the meter against the remaining wires, one at a time and watch the meter. Really ONE and ONLY one of the wires should make the meter read around 12.5 volts. Test all the wires cuz you should only find 1 not 2 or more. Let me know what you find.
Tag this one as constant positive and move on
Next you are going to find the switched positive. Assuming you only found 1 wire that was positive in the previous step. put the key in the ignition and turn it to the on position, you don’t have to start the car just turn it all the way to the position before it would start. Perform the exact same test as the one you just did (friend holding black meter lead on ground, while probing remaining wires) and now you should find a second wire that provides 12.5 ish volts or so. While holding the meter on this wire, turn the key back and forth and your meter should go between 0 and 12 as you turn the key on and off. If so you've found switched positive! Label it and move on.
The remaining wires are the speaker wires and are pretty easy so let me know if we get this far or if you need additional help figuring out the 3 power wires
Answercongratulations! wow, I thought my directions were confusing so good job!
As for the thickness, dont worry about it. everything in the car is fused anyway, so even if there is a current mismatch it'll just blow a fuse and we'll fix it if it happens. Some cd players just use the yellow wire to keep memory so they use a thin wire. and some use the yellow for primary power and only use the red wire as a trigger to turn the unit on (I wish this is how they all did it, so you have the good kind)
ok, so now we are on to testing for the speaker wires.
for this you'll need a new AA battery. make sure in these tests you dont put the battery against any of the 3 power wires we've identified earlier. basically this is pretty easy. there should be 4 sets of wires that look similar in pairs, typically they're white, grey, brown, purple, or sometimes green. in other words, 2 greens, 2 browns, 2 whites, etc. and each pair would have a plain wire (like plain white) and one with a stripe (white with stripe) this is the wireing scheme for aftermarket stuff and if you look at the wiring on your new cd player it will probably have this. if your car doesnt have it then what we will do is put that AA battery across random pairs of wires until you hear a click out of one speaker. then you'll write down which wires made the click in which speaker. you should find 4 sets of wires that make a click in each of the 4 speakers when putting the battery across them (dont hold the battery on the wires, just strike it across). Once you find the 4 pairs, look at them and see if you can identify which one is ground (each set may have a plain wire and a striped wire, this sort of pattern) so once you've done that, you can connect them to the speaker wires on the cd player. the ones with the stripes would go together (striped from the car wiring, goes with striped on the cd player wiring) etc. once you have it runing you can use the cd player's balance and fade controls to verify that when you pan to the left or right, the sound goes to the left or right like it should, and when you fade to the rear or front the sound follows as well. If you cant identify the negatives on the speaker wires from the car, there's a few tricks we can do to for that. but its alot of typing, so let me know first. if you get the neg/pos wrong on the speakers it will just sound crappy, thats all, it wont blow up or anything.
Again, I like to use wire nuts (small orange or grey ones) for connecting the wires.
Good luck and congratulations again and let me know how it goes.
