Car stereo installation problem

[lupin]

Hi all, I'm having a problem installing a sony deck on my '91 Golf GTI. The car came with factory amplifiers, and 6 speakers.

Here are the problems:
1. No power up. I tried connecting just the power cable to see if the deck would power up, but no success. Here is the breakdown:
Factory end - aftermarket deck end
Red power cable - red power cable
Orange power cable (the closest thing I can find to yellow) - yellow power cable (I think this is the memory power cable)
Ground - Ground

What's wrong here?

2. Speaker cable problems. I haven't work this part yet, just trying to figure out how I'm going to connect the speaker cables.
The factory end:
FL positive
FR positive
RR positive
RL positive
1 common ground cable

The aftermarket end:
FL +
FL -
FR +
FR -
RR +
RR -
RL +
RL -

How will this work? The guy at crutchfield say I can buy an adapter from them that will solve the common ground issue. However, my friend who is quite knowledgeable said he bought that adapter once, but I don't really need it. He says I can hook one negative from the aftermarket end (either one from the four negatives) to the ground from the factory, and that should do it. I'm skeptic about this.

Second, since the car came with built in amplifiers (active spkrs), the power rating from the aftermarket head unit should be too high. That same crutchfield adapter is also supposed to fix this problem, by lowering power from the head unit. My friend says I don't need it, just connect them directly, the speakers should be able to handle the power. I have no idea what the ratings are from the factory speakers.

Best buy says the only way to solve this speaker problem is rewire everything. Yea, right. $$$$$.

Please help me.

 

[IBhacknU]

wiring adapters are nice when doing the type when you want to use the existing car wiring. While it may be extra $$$, you don't have to worry about splicing into your existing wiring (and making mistakes)

 

[Sluggo]

Gotta agree with IBhacknU, the wiring adaptors are money well spent. There is no telling what wiring is what on your car. PLus the adaptors make it easy to put the stock radio back in when selling the car.

Just read the bottom of the post. If the car has powered speakers, they basically have a line-in (read very low power......milliwatt) connection from the factory unit. If you hook these up to a powered indash unit, you could blow the speakers and the small amp that drives them, that will cost you a bunch more than the adaptors.

 

[cxim]

one of the cables is a deck face light & key on circuit, cable, probably orange or yellow, this has to be hot for most units to power up.

Circuit City usually also has adapter harnesses at about the same price as Crutchfield, as does most any local retail place that does installs.

Plus head down to the library Or a book store & browse a chiltons for your auto wiring harness details.

 

[lupin]

nope. no wiring harness available for my car.

 

[Doodoo]

Ah..this reminds me of working on my cousin's Lexus...that factory amp was a pain. Don't worry about the power ratings of the deck. But if you are connecting the speakers to your new deck...don't you have to disconnect them from the factory amp? Also...there doesn't happen to be one brown wire with a red stripe is there?

 

[yakko]

<< nope. no wiring harness available for my car. >>


I think I have a spare set in my toolbox. I have a 92 Jetta and I put an adapter on it.

You need to make sure which power wire you are hooking up where. One wire is constant power and one is accessory power meaning it only comes on when the key is in. Your best bet would be to get a copy of the wiring diagrams and speak to a good reliable local stereo shop about the powered speakers.

 

[xero]

hahaha......see what you get for buying foreign?!

anyhoo,
i just used a wiring harness for my '91 caprice, and since the harness didn't have a place for the yellow wire, i ran the wire to my fusebox and wrapped the end around the hazardlight fuse, because the yellow wire needs 12v constanty, w/ the car on or off, and the hazards have constant 12v....and it works just fine!
a little ghetto engineering never hurt anyone

 

[lupin]

yakko,
actually yours might be different than mine. I went to 3 stores: Best Buy, circuit city, and h.h. gregg. They all have one type of harness for VW, and it doesn't fit mine.

another update.
I found out that there is only one power cable from the factory end. The orange power cable that I mentioned, it turned out to be brown (?? very similar), and it's a ground cable.
The red cable, which is supposed to be power cable, I checked it with a Multimeter, only has 0.15 volts or something like that.

Damn..

 

[xero]

hey lupin

why dont you just run new speaker wires? take out the factory amp(s) and run new wiring from the deck to four of the speakers..

 

[lupin]

xero:
I can, but it's too much work. Plus car stereo cables can be expensive.

However, I've managed to get it to work. I only connected the positive cables, and ignore the ground cables. Strange, but it worked.

 

[GD695372]

Get some wiring adaptors man.

 

[Farbio]

lupin, if you've gotten it to work, great, and congrats go with it, but just to share what i did in my 86 volvo, which also had a factory amp and somewhat of the same problems, only i had about 40 speaker wires coming into the factory unit. i found the factory amp, which happened to be mounted under the steering colum and simply removied it and spliced the 4 speaker leads (pos/neg) with some extra wire to the new kenwood deck i had.
the power supply was another problem, and i took an approach like xero did, hardwiring the power on switch to the parking lights under the fusebox, which worked....worked like a charm till the thing got totaled.

 

[lupin]

oh, about the power cable, I joined the power switch cable and the main power cable. Then I connected it to the power cable from the factory end, since there is only one power cable from the factory end.

 

[Doodoo]

Wouldn't that leave your deck on all the time? I'm not sure, but sounds like you have to manually turn your deck every time you leave your car now.