Questioni need help hooking up a wiring harness for a pontiac grand am 2001. i dont know how to match up the wires and some guy at best buy told me with the wiring harness i got i need to hook something up to either the fuse box or the car ignition. help please?
AnswerI'm assuming you're talking about putting an aftermarket deck into the car.
What you'll need to buy is an aftermarket harness, which you will connect to the harness for the aftermarket deck (via either soldering or crimp connectors), and then the aftermarket harness should just clip into the plug that was previously in your factory deck, and the other end will connect to your new deck.
As for actually hooking up the wires, you'll need to connect the wires off of the aftermarket harness to the wires off of the deck's harness. Since they're both aftermarket, the colours *should* match up, even still, they'll be labelled.
The standard colours can be found here:
http://www.sfxaudio.com/AudioSchool/colorcodes.asp
You'll want to solder them together for the best connection, followed by heat shrink which is available at any local hardware store. If you aren't proficient in soldering, crimp-connectors (sometimes called butt connectors) are available and possible too. You just put the slightly stripped wires into them, and pinch them.
They look like this:
http://www.jimruffi.com/images/shopping/butt_connector2.JPG
Another option is to just cut the wires before the factory harness, but an aftermarket harness is usually a mere $15 or so, and will save you a world of trouble especially when the day comes you want to sell the car and put the factory deck back, so I would strongly recommend against it.
Also, it's worth noting that there are extra steps involved if you have OnStar and/or the factory 'Monsoon' system in your car, or if you've purchase a harness that includes the door chime option that you'd lose with an aftermarket deck.
If I've assumed anything incorrectly, let me know, and I'll provide links and other information you might require.
Justin
