Anyone got a green power lead

[Cotty]

dark_sounds and I, well more him and me watching, have just installed my new head unit and we think who ever did the wiring on my car at the factory must have been on acid.

It has:

Green = permanent live
Red = ignition lead
Yellow = absolutly nothing
Black = earth

and usual coloured speaker wires

[dark_sounds]

red ignition is alright,,, to a certain extent,, i just cant get over the bright green for the perminant live!? and wtf is that yellow doing!

anyway lol just bit wierd,,, might use pink, and florestcent colours just for the fun of it!

[Cotty]

wtf is that yellow doing!

!

F-all, perhaps they thought it looked pretty

[d6dph]

WOW! Thats some interesting wiring, few headaches there i guess

[dark_sounds]

nah was alright, just meant had to dig out the multimeter! lol

[Cotty]

Gave me an opportunity to sit there and say

[kam325itouring]

that dont sound like original wiring dude!!!!!! if it is thats f'd up!!!!!!!!!!

[miniblob]

Ha ha, mine was well fooked when i did mine - took a while to sort it out!!

At least you had a power wire at the start - mine was coming from the hazard switch

[noney82]

mines was wire from standard when i put my new radio in. the speakers were a fucked up there lives to them were lnked so it sounded poo and as for the power well i just got a multimeter out tested what was what and hoped for the best and it still works. i found the best thing to do was take the passanger seat out rip the old wiring out the the speakers and replace it with your own and the i tidyed the power cables up. if i doubt just wire your own in, hope that helps

[Cotty]

noney82 we got it sorted in the end, its just you expect certain wires to be a certain colour

[tomtomiS]

never expect any wires to be a certain colour. i hear that if ur misfortunate enuff to own a vauxhall the live feed for radio is black. i wonder if anyone has fudged their head unit by expecting it to be earth!

[Cotty]

tomtomiS Thats messed up

[tomtomiS]

i know its just plain rude isnt it!

[cheesebox]

Dudes I think you might have just solved my stereo nightmare!

There's 3 wires to the back of my head unit : RED, GREEN, YELLOW (yup, no black). I'd thought yellow was earth as I'd only done a lamp test, and not checked with a multimeter.

This evening I traced the wires back and found this behind\above the glove box:




On the second pic (yellow arrow) you can see someone's snipped the black wire back to the connector! No wonder I was having "slight problems" (fuse 23 blowing, no stereo when headlights are on, stereo rebooting when vol turned up to 25% or more).

I guess yellow must just be nearer earth than green is, for the stereo to have worked at all. Maybe it's a feed for the lit bezel on some stereos, so light dims when the dash dimmer control is adjusted? I dunno, but whoever modded this wiring needs shooting. Am looking forward to sorting it tomorrow evening...

So it looks like the acid head at bmw assembled the electrics on more than one e30!

[cass1_5503]

never expect any wires to be a certain colour. i hear that if ur misfortunate enuff to own a vauxhall the live feed for radio is black. i wonder if anyone has fudged their head unit by expecting it to be earth!

yep i was lucky not to blow a cd player in vauxhall my boss asked me to fit his new stereo in my lunch break so i gave it a go cut long story short mixed up the wires and bang lucky it was only fuses that blew

[tim-ix]

I've got an old standard fit radio-cassette with a speed-related volume control. A wire that appears to do nothing could be something to do with that.