Sony headunit

[yeah_mick]

im buying a sony headunit off someone at work, its a pretty new one, bought it from halfords for her car under 12 months ago. what i want to know is about wireing it in? is there an adapter loom available or do i have to re wire it myself?

[StuBeeDoo]

If IIRC from when I fitted my Sony, it's plug & play.

[yeah_mick]

u mean litterly pull out he old one and the sony will just slide on into the hole sufrely that cant be right

[mrLEE30]

I am sure there are adaptors available, but you cannot guarentee who has been messing with the loom found in your E30 in the first place before you got it. i always find it better to wire it in myself.

you will need the frame from the new Sony head unit

assuming you are a complete novice then best bet is to remove the car battery NEGATIVE wire

remove the old headunit (normally by inserting a long flat object down either side - most have special tools to do this) pull the old unit out slowly so you dont damage any wires. if you are luck there will be a big plug, if you are less luck you will have male/femail connectors, and worst case you will see wires joined together covered in tape. open the plug/pull apart the connectors or cut the wires in the middle of the join area(remove the tape first) then remove the old cage by bending the metal tabs straight with a small screwdriver.

fit the new cage in the reverse manner using the screwdrivers to bend the tabs inwards where possible. It helps to remove the OBC/Clock to do this.

next job is identifying the wires. you should see something like the picture below:




ignore the blue cables on the left they are RCA / or amplifier leads, in the centre you should find brown which is ground/earth/negaitve ( depending on what the head unit manual calls it), red/green - this is permanant live or 12V, purple and white this is the switched live i.e comes on with ignition) the red/white wire you see with the plug on the end is from the ligh switch - or dimmer function if your strereo has one

on the left you can see a white wire, this is the wire from the electric areial and tels it to lift ot lower the electric areial (assuming you still have one) you cna also see one thick black wire, this is the ariel wire


and on the right you wil see four sets of pairs. blue/black and Blue/Brown are the rear right speaker, Blue/black and Blue.Red are the front right speaker. the sets with Yellow go to the left (this is when looking forward) - the best way to be sure is take a normal 1.5V battery and put one wire on one end and the other at the other end, you will hear the speaker make a noise - so jst note which wires go to each speaker. normally the wire with the black is the negative speaker wire.

Now its a case of wiring your Sony unit in. If possible get a manual to identify which wire is which, but normaly there is a red wire and a yellow wire (this is permanent and switched power - the permanent normally will have a fuse on it) a black wire which is ground, a blue wire which is for you areial signal wire, then oyu need to identify the speaker wires, if you have the manual it easy, if not let me know and i can explain how.

If possible use the type of connectors you see in my pic, this gives a good connection and more importantly a safe connection, but worse case is twist the wires together (and if possible solder them too) then cover in heat shrink or PVC tape - note is a bodge job and dont complain when the thing does not work or worse still your car sets on fire.

once its all done and connected do not puch the unit into its case, connect the battery and check it works, if not remove the battery lead an see what is wrong. if this is the case then i suggest you seek the help from someone who knows!! a short circuited wire is not a nice thing!!

otherwise good luck

Mrlee

[yeah_mick]

mines the standard tape deck that came in the car, my granny wasnt a big fan of sound systems. ive had a little look today and i didnt realise the you could remove the cage for the stanrd headunit and the plug was built into it. this shouldnt be a problem for me to do.

next time ill look at my car a bit more before i go asking questions

[yeah_mick]

pulled it out earlier and not quite as simple as i thought, looks like like the one pictured above but without the rcas obviously. so i went to halfords and bought a connectore block that plugs intot he stereo wires then are just blank ends to strip and join up. so as i write this im printing out the post above ready to go and wire it in.

ill report back in half hour or so.

[yeah_mick]

all in and working. cheers for hte info mrlee

[TonyWilson]

Good info, i'm about to wire my head unit in and the wires i have in the car don't match what the haynes manual says, so again thanks for the good info

[TonyWilson]

Got my headunit in thanks to your advice, straight forward and simple thankyou very much, it's not a great headunit but it only cost a tenner lol

[6potpower]

tony i have 4 of them units all from E36's

[katanacrazy]

Thanks for the advice, seems you have helped quite a few people include me.
I hope you can clear one final thing up for me.
My electric ariel has a double wire coming from the boot. One side red and the other side white. I connected the white wire as per your instructions to the blue lead on the headunit harness. Where does the red wire from the ariel connect to?
Thanks

[Daverave]

Positive power the white is just a trigger

[craig2105]

Thanks ofr this thread. My first post actually - I'm helping my brother fit a new head unit in his car and someone has previously got at the wiring, so the run down on what wire does what is invaluable.

I'm sure I'll be hanging around here a bit - the E30 he picked up recently is polishing up well and is in surprisingly good condition considering it's been an abused family hack for a number of years.

It's a 316i Auto Yeah I know - perhaps a tad underpowered (!) but it deserves a little TLC

Cheers, Craig