73 Dart w Kraco 4 wire head unit, HELP!

[Jacob Moparman13]

So, to make a long story short I recently acquired a large collection of cassettes. My 73 Dart has (I assume) a non factory Kraco cassette player with AM/FM radio. It has 4 wires (red, green, black and gray) I assume red is 12V power, black is ground, and green/gray are speaker wires.

There is one speaker in the dash, that has a + and - on it, so I attached both wires to the corresponding colors off the radio. Nuthin!

The player has power (now) and lights up, and I can hear the cassettes “playing” but no sound.

There are also two 6x9 in the rear package tray, but haven’t chased those wires yet.

What did I do wrong? Is the speaker in the dash completely gone? Does the ground off the radio need to actually grounded, and same for the speaker?

You’d think for how simple and how few wires there are on this unit, this would be a piece of cake. But electrical stuff like this has never been my forte. Can’t even find my dang multi meter. But id like to have a functional player so I can listen to some music!

 

[Professor Fate]

If all you have are four wires, then you need to separately ground the speakers.
Hunt down the wiring diagram for your radio using the model number that should be on the case somewhere.
But offhand the way I see it is:
Red: fused power supply (preferably hot in run & acc.)
Black: Ground
Green/Gray: Left and right speaker (+) connection, can't say which is which offhand.
Each speaker needs to have it's (-) terminal grounded.
This is a stereo, so a one-speaker hookup isn't going to work. Chase the wires coming from your rear 6x9s and hook them up to the corresponding wires off the head unit and ground the (-) side of the speakers.

 

[Super-Cuda]

Professor Fate is correct.

Kraco Stereos were common ground I'm pretty sure.

Green -Left Speaker, Grey -right speaker.

Run negative terminal from each speaker to the body of the car.

 

[67Dart273]

You have a multimeter? check the speakers for continuity. Of all the Dakotas and other junk that "I've junked," I've found a surprising amount of speakers OPEN