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Stereo Wiring Q's


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I've got an '81 Dl 4wd wagon and I want to put in a Pioneer CD. The radio/casette player I pulled out has only 2 wires other than speaker wires which included the ground/negative setup. So this must have been a subaru specific aftermarket setup. The only two non-speaker wires was a blue w/ inline fuse and a black. They were plugged into a 6 wire harness. The harness layout is as follows (I don't know which side is up though):

 

BLUE - RED/blue stripe - WHITE

YELLOW - RED/green stripe - BLACK

 

The blue from the old radio was plugged to blue and the black into black.

 

My new deck has a Yellow (battery tag), Red (acc tag), and a black (ground) then of course the speaker wires.

 

The Haynes manual has a wire layout that's useless...it's "Typical of 1980 through 1994 Audio System Layout." I don't have some of the wires it says and I've got wires the diagram doesn't have.

 

Can anyone help me out? Please. I drive alot and I'm getting bored!

Thanks,

Jason

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But my problem is I couldn't get any power to the head unit. I don't know which wire provide power. I did check my fuse(s) and they are good. What to do now?

 

Anyone have a FSM with wire diagrams for a 1981 DL that you can scan and email or post?

 

Or has anyone wired one up and can tell me which wire's which?

Thanks

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Got a voltmeter? test the lines with the key off and the key on.. chances are (because of the age of your vehicle) that there arent any hot wires for the radio with the key off.. you will probably need to make one for your new deck.

 

If you don't have a voltmeter, then make a testlight .. use a turn signal bulb( or any auto bulb you may have laying around.) and solder or tape wires on to it.. works great

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I've got a voltmeter but I don't know how to use it. Care to teach me? I suppose I could read the directions (does that make me less of a man?). Thanks for the suggestion.

I'll give it a try tonight.

Still waiting for that one person who knows...

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Hopefully you have a digital meter to check with. The advantage with them is they are usually protected in case you make a mistake in the setup of the meter. They are also easier to read than a analog meter.

 

Set the meter to read DC volts with the function switch and set the range to read at least 12 volts. Place the red test lead in the "+" position and the black lead in the "-" position. You are now ready to test for voltage on the car leads.

 

Place the black meter lead on a good ground point on the car and then place the red meter lead on the wires you want to test for voltage then take your reading.

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All you need to do is forget about the wires from the old radio and run new wires follow the instruction you got with the new pioneer

and run them direct to the fuse box there are special little leads just for that purpose ( there flat and will slide right in between the fuse and the fuse clip) there at radio shack for 1.00

 

yellow wire will go to the clock or any fuse that suplies constent power with ignition off take the red wire and start touching in tell you find the fuse that supplies power that where you hook the yellow wire to the red wire can go to the radio fuse

 

the blue/white wire is the power amp

 

white

white/black==left front

 

green

green/black==left rear

 

gray

gray/black==right front

 

violet

violet/black==right rear

 

and of coures black ==ground

 

hassey

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The problem with these old stereos is that they use a common ground system for the speakers, this doesn't work with new aftermarket stereos. You will want to run your own speaker wires, directly to the speakers. The black striped wire is ground, and the old speakers had the polarity on the connector. The blue wire is your switched hot, this is the one that you want to run to your decks red wire. The yellow wire on the deck is the constant hot for the memory features, for this one you can run a wire straight to the battery, or if you find a non switched hot, (like the one for the clock memory) run it to that one. Then just like Hassey said for the speakers.

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I agree. Put all new wiring in. It'll sound better and you have less of a chance of burning a wire, or worse, fryin your deck! :dead:

I put a Pioneer CD deck in mine. I ran both a hot and ground directly from the batt due to the fact that I have a 0.3v differance between batt/engine ground and chassis ground. :eek:

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Yup, run new wiring to the speakers. Easiest install for the head unit is to go to a car stereo store or crutchfield.com and buy a stereo wiring harness for your car, about $20. Saves the major headache of rewiring and gives you the option to reinstall/upgrade whatever stereo you want without a whole new rewire. Better yet, return your stereo (unless you got it free) and just buy from Crutchfield. They give you all the wire harness adaptors and speaker wire adaptors for undoing the common ground as well as detailed diagrams and info specific to your model of car. They give you all this extra stuff free, easily $30-$40 worth of stuff, not to mention the instructions you can't get anywhere else. I don't work for them, just a very happy customer 3x now.

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Thanks for all the responses guys. All really appreciated. I actually didn't get to read your posts last night before wiring it up. My modem crashed and I hadn't put the new one on yet. Anyway, I took the voltmeter and checked all my wires I described and the only one that had power key on or off was the blue one (11.95~98). So I ran a line out of the fuse panel and it works! Thanks Caleb...I forgot about my voltmeter until you said something. I'm running all new speaker wire so I won't have that common ground issue. Now that I know it works, I've just got to actually finish the install.

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