Audio Systems: wiring, oldsmobile cutlass supreme international, oldsmobile cutlass supreme


Question
Mark,

As i told you i bought a meter. I released the old radio and i found the following colors of the wiring.

2 light yellow (one gave 12,2 v)
1 orange
1 dark blue
1 light blue
2 green
1 light green
1 grey
2 dif. colors of beige
1 pink
1 dark yellow
1 dark brown
2 black
1 black/white

Is their a standard for color wiring?

Frank
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The text above is a follow-up to ...

-----Question-----
Mark, I live in Holland and i'm an owner of a Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme International Series U9 (1991). I bought a new car radio / cd player from Sony. Well the wiring from the old connections have different collers then from the Sony radio. Do you know the collering meaning from the Oldmobile. If I know that then i'm able to connect that radio.
-----Answer-----
hmmm.... I think on this one, it may be best to not try to rely on finding a chart and hoping its right, and use the tried and true method of using a meter to verify what wire is what.  Write back to me when you have a meter (available at walmart or homedepot for $18) and I'll help you find out what wire is what. ok?

Answer
I'm sorry, I though I sent you my guide on what to do with the meter.  unfortunatly these are completely NON standard colors so we need the meter to get it right.  just follow this guide and let me know how it goes.  there's 2 parts to the guide, this is part 1:

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