Case 1: Factory Harness is Still Intact
- go buy the metra/scosche/other wire harness. Makes everything clean and easy. Pretty much all of the harnesses are the same and there are some general rules to follow.
- yellow is constant +12 v, red is + 12 v accessory, black is ground, blue is power antenna, blue/white is amp turn on, orange is + illumination (don’t use this wire unless you know what you are doing!), orange/black and orange/white are the dimmer wires (don’t use). Speakers: white - front left, grey - front right, green - back left, purple - back right. The speaker lead with the black stripe is negative.
Case 2: Factory Harness is gone and you have to hardwire.
- Get a multimeter (best), voltmeter (good), or testlight (okay if you have no option). Get a battery with some wire taped onto the posts (1.5 V - 9 V will do, you don’t need anything huge).
- With the car off, find the wire with +12 V. This is constant, connect it to the yellow wire from your stereo harness (not plugged into the deck).
- Turn the car to accessory (1 click). Make sure your lights are off. Find the wire that is +12 V. Connect it to the red wire from your radio harness.
- Turn on the lights, find the wire that’s +12 V. Tape it up… you don’t need it.
- Turn off the lights, turn off the car. Touch one end of the battery to a wire and touch the other end to the other wires one at a time until you hear a speaker “pop”. When you identify a speaker connect it to the appropriate leads as indicated above.
- Of the wires left (if there is more than one), one of them will give you ground, no matter what you do. Check the resistance to ground, turn things on and off (ignition, fan, lights, etc) and make sure it stays ground. If in doubt run a new ground wire to the chassis somewhere nearby. Connect the ground wire to black.
If anyone has specific questions, feel free to ask.