Factory radio harness, what color is what

[97DodgeRAM1500]

I am going to be putting in my new head unit tomorrow, which wires from the factory harness should go to my BATT, ILL, ACC wires on my pioneers harness. I should connect the hot wire with the ignition on acc to acc, right? the always hot wire to ill, right? But where does the batt one go? any help is appreciated, this is my first install. I cant use a plug in harness, the previous owner hacked up the radio wiring... Also do I need to fuse any of my connections, and if so what size fuse should i use on which?


Thanks in advance

[dewme5]

DO NOT CUT OFF YOUR FACTORY CONNECTOR!!!

just go to any stereo store, and buy the harness adapter for your ram. it will just snap on to your dash harness, and then have all the available wires already sticking out, and the colors will match. (and they are labeled too)

this will save you from trying to put together the harness inside the dash and chopping your fingers all up, the colors will match, making it easy, and easier still because you are doing it at the shop bench, not halfway inside of your dash. if you ever change radios again, you can re-use that adapter, if you sell the vehicle, you can just pop off the adapter, and PLUG the old radio right back up.

[ehostler]

According to his post, the previous owner hacked all of the wiring, so a plug in adapter will not work.

Now that I know about the plug in adapters, I may have to look into upgrading my stereo, as I've seen that alot of the newer head units are compatible with the Infinity speaker system that is in my truck.

[dewme5]

got so anxious, i skipped right over that part.

here are some easy tricks for figuring out what is what. use a digital volt meter to find out which wires have power. keep in mind, there will be a couple of power wires.. constant, switched (by the ignition key) may be 2 of them, illumination (will be controlled by the headlight switch,

after finding and labeling all of those, find your ground (use the contunity part of the volt meter) get that labeled

make sure the ignition is off for this part

then, you should have at least 8 wires left. these should be your speaker wires. take a 9v battery and pick one wire, and touch it to the positive. keep using that one until you find it's match. just start going thru the rest of the wires, 1 at a time, and touching them to the negative. when you hear a speaker thump (a 9v will be safe, even a 9.6v from a portable drill, but don't use a 12v or higher!), you have found a matching pair. now... is the speaker popping up, or down? popping up, the wires are right. if it's popping down, switch the wires around and just make sure again. should pop up now. label them both, (I use masking tape becuse it's easy to write on.) and keep going on. you should come up with all the pairs, and the wires hooked up right too.

if you don't make sure the wires are hooked up right for the speakers, they will be out of polarity. basically, when one is pushing out, another is pushing in. doesn't sound like a big deal, but it will really screw up the sound. you will have to turn the stereo way up to get decent volume, which will cause distortion, premature wear and such. just takes an extra minute to get it right, but if you don't, you will know.

[5thAve]

Ground will be through the ground strap that bolts to the radio. There will also be a contact on the radio that sends a signal to the power antenna on cars that have them, so that wire may or may not be in the harness..

Usually the front and rear speakers share one of their contacts so there might only be 6 speaker wires.

[97DodgeRAM1500]

Ok guys I have a problem. I got everything in (except the rear speakers) and something is wrong. The speakers sound really distorted, like if you turned the volume to full blast kind of distorted, but this happens at moderate volume. Me and my neighbor (who's done this before) checked over my wiring twice and everything is correct, I am 99.99 percent sure its not my wiring. I know its not the speakers or the crossovers because its all the speakers that sound bad and i have to crank the volume up higher than i should have to, for the amount of sound that is coming out . Only thing i can think of is i got a dud head unit, . i am running no amps just the head unit (new pioneer premier 200 watt) i got the speaker outputs from the head going onto the input on the crossovers, from there the mid leads going to the mids, and the treater leads going to the tweeters, the head unit is a plug in harness with all new speaker wire that I ran NO factory wiring as far as speakers go, I only used the plug in harness on the power side not the speaker connection side. Any suggestions on how to fix this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks a lot

[Ausydad]

Sorry, I was going to write something and went back to re-read your posted problems. My earlier thought no longer applies to the complicated system you describe. Sorry, and Good Luck!

[dewme5]

some older head units can deal with chassis grounds. but, on the newer ones, it's really a bad idea. distortion occurs from over driving either the amp, or the speakers. it's not a ground problem. now, if you get a humm, that can be affected by the location of the head unit ground, ignition wires, amp ground, and a few other things. but adding a chassis ground to your speakers can be an open invatation for a blown head unit in the worst case scenario.