car stereo

[Duffman]

Alright having an odd problem changing the stereo in my car. I have a 93 plymouth acclaim. It had its stock pos radio with a broken tape deck, and I ripped the nice aftermarket one out of my old car before they towed it away to car heaven.

The wires on the new stereo are all logical, white/white striped for the the speakers, then green/green striped etc. The other stereo not so easy. So I too a standard 3.5mm jack and cut it open and put it in ipod and just started touching the wires til I found out the speakers. Got all 4 labeled and ready in a few minutes, piece of cake. I got the power, and aux power wired and crimped, grouned all that stuff. Plug it in, stereo turns on. So I take the wires from the new stereo for the speakers, and tap them to the car speaker wires to test it. Nothing, abosolutley nothing. I took headphones and tested the stereo using those too, nothing. No matter what I try I cannot get the stereo to push out sound.

The only thoughts I can think of is some sort of failsafe if all the speakers are connected at once. Or that something is wrong with the stereo. There are also 2 unused wires coming from the car that I can't figure out there use. And the only other odd thing, is that the baclight on the new stereo lcd doesn't light up, however it is day time and I'm not 100% its supposed to be on.

So anyone with experience, before I go out and start buying wire diagrams and borrowing other stereos to test it with any advice?

[muchspl3]

did you plug in the ant? or does it work the same with radio/cd.

you should have bought a wiring harness, for 15 bucks you would have saved yourself a lot of headach....

[lynx]

Make and model would be useful (the stereo, not the car).

There should be 3 wires providing power to the stereo.

The first is direct power - this allows you to use the stereo at any time. Without this you probably won't have the main functions including the backlight and amplifier.
The second is ignition power - it tells the stereo when the ignition is on and may cause it to turn on automatically depending on the model.
Finally there's lighting power which dims the backlight when the lights are on, so you don't get dazzled at night.

My guess is that you've only got the direct power connected and that it is connected to the wrong point, probably to the ignition circuit connector. That probably means that the unit seems to turn on but there's no power for actual operation.

Another guess is that the two "spare" wires are ignition power and lighting power. Obviously you can check this by testing them for power when you turn on the ignition or lights. The colours of these wires would be useful.

[Duffman]

Alright I made some serious progress. It works sort of. I bought a faceplate mounting thinger ma bob and it had a wiring diagram so the left over wires were for the power antenea, i don't have one so fuck it. And one for the lighting and one for the memory. But they don't work, so I put the direct power and the backup power on one line and it works, but doesn't retain any presets or anything, so until I buy a wiring harness every attempt to rig something up just blows the fuse.