car audio question(what wires go where?)

[Lithium381]

I've got an old radio i want to use....on the back it's got 5 wires comming out(i cut them out of my moms old car) it's got one white wire, two red ones and two green ones, what goes where? i would assume the red ones go to a speaker and the green ones too, but what about the white one? power? i always thought you needed two wires for power....it's a pretty old pull from a toyota 4runner....any help?

 

[MichaelD]

Only 5? Are you sure? Can you snap a pic and post it over at BBZZDD?

First off, is it "digital" (digital display?) or the old dial-type? Modern, digital car stereos need three connections for "power": Red is usually switched +12v, yellow is constant +12v (for presets memory) and black is ground.

After that, you typically have 8 wires, pos and neg for all for speakers (each speaker needs a + and a -) Older, 2-speaker type radios typically share a common negative (NOT ground, negative for the speaks) and separate left and right positives.

) it's got one white wire, two red ones and two green ones,

I"m going to take an educated guess here. If I'm wrong, don't yell. First off, find an inline fuse holder and put a 5-amp or smaller fuse in it. If you skip the fuse part, you're on your own.

Attach the fuse holder to the white wire. This should be +12v in. The ground wire seems to be missing, so I'd venture to say that it grounds by attaching the metal chassis of the radio to the metal chassis of the dashboard. You should just be able to attach a wire to a screw somewhere on the body of the radio to hook up to a -12v terminal for testing purposes.

The two red and two green are proly L and R pos and negs. Red being +. Give it a shot with a cheap speaker. Worst case scenario, you blow the fuse. Good lcuk.

 

[Lithium381]

well the actual radio, it's got 8 tabs on the back, however, the harness, which i cut about 6" out, only has 5 wires in it, and i've also got a speaker i took out of the same car, it's got a green and then a green/red comming out if, not sure where the green/red originated....

 

[MichaelD]

8 "tabs?" Do you mean there's a Molex connector w/8 pins?

 

[Lithium381]

yeah, it's got 8 pins in there(flat ones) and the harness has two blank holes on it.....only 5 wires come out of the harness, btw this is an old dial type, heh

 

[SuperSix]

Can you take a pic of the back of the unit?

 

[Lithium381]

Originally posted by: SuperSix
Can you take a pic of the back of the unit?

unfortunatly not at the current time, my capture card isnt' working .....is there a color code convention? although it's got two reds and two greens, heh, so that wouldn't help much, well a little anyways...

 

[chasem]

if its a 87 or above 4runner, its the same with all toyotas......


anyway, get a new wireharness and save yourself trouble