power wiring for stereo ?

[trigger]

not long had car, 325i touring auto g reg, and just went to put my cd player in it and found out that whoever removed the old unit removed all the wiring with it ! including cutting the speaker wires right back so they only protrude about an inch into cockpit under glove box !

can any one suggest where the best place would be to run a new live supply and earth from as i tried running it from the cigarrette lighter and an earth to the body behind glove box but when i tried to connect to the cdplayer the fuse keeps blowing.
i am working on the asumption that the car is negative earth?

[placey]

the standard ignition switched live in the e30 is a mauvey colour with a stripe along its length. might be worth trying to find this and checking it with a bulb or a meter. if it's not there you'll have to take the steering cowling off and find it back there (or wherever it originates, maybe someone will enlighten us) and extend it out. there are numerous earth point to choose from - again check for continuity with a length of wire from the battery negative terminal before doing anything back up.

for a permanent live i suggest running this straight from the battery positive terminal - fused at each end but the chances are your unit will have a fuse already in that cable so that's one less to worry about.

as for speaker cables if someone has chopped them back then it's well worth running new through, don't bother messing around with joins and the like unless you really don't care about the resulting sound.

paul

[trigger]

cheers paul,
will do that, looked at speaker wiring and they are totally bodged and buggered so running new ones seems to be the only option.

cheers for the advice ! top

james.