Aftermarket stereo installation

[bigislandboxster]

You should get a negative ground wire with the harness on the Alpine, just hook that up to any common grounding connection on the car....If you can't find a bolt to attach it to under the dash, extend a wire to one of the bolts in front of the battery compartment, thats where mine is grounded to....If you have to extend it, let me know, it can be frustrating getting wires past the firewall if you don't know where to look.

Also, as a warning,when you take your old head unit out you'll see a green wire connected to a male terminal on probably your right side of the mounting sleeve. This is part of the anti theft system, if you leave it there and put another head unit in there, it'll possibly read that the unit has been stolen, and will not fully arm. Take the female end off and tape it up and tuck it somewhere where it won't come into contact with any metal parts.

Lou

[RandallNeighbour]

Got an email from Rod saying that if I had door speakers the harness the other guy sold me may not work.

So I am thinking of forging ahead without that harness and making this a fourth of July installation project. But, I have questions before I cut any wires...

1) Can I just unplug the amp from the back of my CDR210 and leave it in place for the time being?

2) If I wire up the "right front +" and "right front -" wires that were going into my old unit, will it power both the dash speakers and the door speakers too? Or, do I need to root around and trace wires from the door speakers and dash speakers to the existing head unit? (I sure hope I don't need to do that!)

Here's a copy of a PDF I found on the web for wiring aftermarket units I was planning to use:

http://www.iwantaporsche.net/StereoWiringConfig.pdf

[donv]

It's been a long time since I did the rear speaker kit, but if I remember correctly, the male terminals on the back of the radio were simple flat blades. You might consider going to Radio Shack or Fry's, etc. and get solder or crimp terminals that match. Then you could make the harness up outside the car and just insert the terminals into the connector block. Yes, tedious doing it one by one - but easily swappable if you get something mixed up, and no hot irons and molten metal near all that expensive plastic!

On the earlier question re: negative ground, I'm fairly certain you're safe there based on the wiring diagram and it being a modern car. However, you can easily check it at any bulb location if you use a DC voltmeter to be sure.

One caution: try to use the established electronics ground that is in the dash area (the radio harness being a good source) instead of any random chassis ground. I can't explain the difference, but there is one. You may end up with an ignition noise issue if you use a chassis ground (there are filters that can fix this, but why go there?).

Good luck!

[RandallNeighbour]

I am now staring at my new aftermarket Alpine head unit in the box. I'm scared silly to start cutting wires off that molex connector plugged into the back of my Becker head unit.

My fear is that the wires going to the speakers are coming out of the amplifier and heading straight to the speakers... which means I will have to run new wires to each of the speakers instead of just soldering my wiring harness to the wires in the existing connector.

Am I right or wrong on this?

I thought this was going to be simple, but the Crutchfield tech support guy (who was nice enough to talk to me even though I did not buy anything from them) told me the wires go from the stereo to the amp and then to the speakers.

While this makes all kinds of sense, I still find it odd the way the plugs are in the back of my Becker unit.

Has anyone cut those wires and used a diagram like the one I posted above straight to a wiring harness for an aftermarket unit with success, or did you run new speaker wires to each speaker?

[bigislandboxster]

To answer a question.....Yes, the speaker wires run from the amp to the speakers.
The head unit is like the brains of the stereo system.....It tells the amp what to do.....If you take out the Becker head unit you will see that the lines out left and right, are on a yellow plug on top. The big difference between Becker and I think all aftermarket head units is that aftermarket units have DIN cables for their output, Becker uses wires. Why they did this I have no idea, its totally different. This is why I said that you'd be better off running the speaker wire straight to your head unit, I should have told you about the line out issue, I'm sorry I didn't mention it before. The other option I can see is to get yourself an aftermarket amp and keep the new head unit, or pull the speaker wires off the existing amp and run them to your new head unit. One more option just popped into my head as well......Splice the end of the DIN output cables on your new head unit, and attach them to the existing output wires which were on your Becker(the ones leading from the yellow clip). Just cut those wires making sure to tag them L and R, and you may be alright with that......These things can be a headache, because Beckers just aren't aftermarket friendly in their design....

Good luck!

[RandallNeighbour]

Lou,

OK, then I'm gonna yank my Becker unit, unplug the top yellow connector, cut those wires and label each one, solder them to the Alpine wiring harness and see what happens.

If I screw it up, I'll take it to Tweeter on Wednesday and let them fix my mess up!