Installing new radio...wiring questions

[wfd1831]

I am somewhat of an electrical retard and am attempting to wire a new radio in a 94 Hijet deck van. Can anyone help with the wiring schematics. The old harness has red/white, red, blue, black/white, green/black, green/yellow. I am assuming the two green wires are speaker wires? black/white is ground? one red power and one for constant power (memory)??? basically I am lost.

[zbadboy]

I don't know the wiring diagram on these vehicles. What I usually do is leave the radio on and powered while I cut the wires. Then I can narrow down what they belong to. I.E. left/right speaker etc.. If you have already disconnected the stereo you might want to reconnect it and try these steps. Just a thought....

Jeff

[larryn2o]

how many speakers does it have? you should be able to find the hot wires easily . there are cheap testers in the auto section . just clip the alligator clip to bare metal then touch each wire to see which ones light up.
1 there should be a hot with the key on
2 a hot all the time (digital radios)
3 a ground ( this one will light up when referenced to a hot wire see above )
4 there are 2 ways to wire up speakers . most OEM radios have a wire to and another back from each speaker. i would guess the green ones.
cheap aftermarket radios frequently have only 1 wire to each speaker a + and the - minus side grounds to bare metal at the speaker.

[wfd1831]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I am not sure how many speakers it has, they are hidden up under the dash somewhere. I am assuming there is just one. The old radio had a digital clock, it is safe to assume one of the hot wires will be the memory, one will be the power for the radio, one ground and two speaker wires. The old radio had 6 wires going to it.....what would mystery wire #6 be???

[wfd1831]

I was trying to be cheap and avoid a trip to the parts store to get a tester.......might have to break down and get one tomorrow.

[larryn2o]

you can rig up on old tail light bulb as a tester . it has a brass base that serves as ground and 1 or 2 lead pads the go to the + (hot) side. strip back about 3 inches of wire and wrap it around the brass base, then tape it to hold it on. this is your ground.
take a straight pin & push it into one wire , touch the pin head to the lead pad on the base of the bulb & if it is hot it will light up.
i often test speakers with a $1.00 radio that i got at the dollar tree. i just stripped the head phone wires & touch them to the speaker wires.

[myhijet]

The old radio had 6 wires going to it.....what would mystery wire #6 be???
Could be a wire to illuminate with the dash lights if so equipped. The speaker wire(s) are generally a solid color for one and the same color with a tracer stripe for the other.

[greg0187]

Could be a wire to illuminate with the dash lights if so equipped. The speaker wire(s) are generally a solid color for one and the same color with a tracer stripe for the other.

Yep. Mine had this wire. It goes hot when you turn on the parking/head lights. Some aftermarket radios support this connection, usually to make the brightness lower at night. I had some mystery wires with mine as well. They looked like speaker wires but the only speaker was built into the radio.

-Greg

[wfd1831]

Figured it out. It had two sets of speaker wires (I am assuming) in the harness. I guess the second set was for the upgraded model with two speakers :D: That left the hot wire and the ground wire, had to run a new wire from the battery for the memory....before anyone pounces...yes the harness with the new radio had an inline fuse for this line. Still haven't found the location of the speaker, they buried it well up under the dash, did find the fuse box though after I blew the fuse for the radio....surprisingly the fuses were labeled in english.

Thanks,

Chad

[gumballf355]

Do you have a breakdown of what wires where what? Power, ground, remote, speaker positive and negatives?

[wfd1831]

It has been too long since I messed with it to remember the exact wiring. Without looking at it... I believe I had two sets of speaker wires (all of the speaker wires had tracer stripes in them) I only have one speaker so the other set of speaker wires is an extra. I can't remember what color the hot wire and ground wire were....ended up using a tester to find the hot wire. On mine I did have to run a wire from the battery to the new radio for the memory (I could not find a wire in the existing harness that was hot all of the time).

[cmaranto]

Figuring out which speaker wires are which is easy. A D cell battery across the wires will produce a "click" in that speaker without any damage.

As far as the 12 volt stuff.....c'mon, you gotta get a tester sometime.

[Mighty Milt]

gumball,

you truck didn't come with a radio did it? and it probably didn't come with speakers either, right? i would just look for a constant hot and a keyed hot (with a test light) in the dash there you probably even have a plug for an optional radio from the factory. if it does have speaker wires in the plug there is no telling where they lead to. i'm in the same boat with greg, i had a bunch of (what looked like) speaker wires plugged into the back of the stereo but the speaker was built into the face of my radio. rather than run the wires down, i just put new ones.

[TractorDre]

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http://stores.lulu.com/tkojames