car stereo wiring

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bob shaner

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Anybody know the speaker wiring diagram for a old Pioneer Super tuner am-fm cassette model KEH-1818. Somebody gave it to me but no diagram for the speakers, there are two grey one w/tracer, two green one w/tracer. Ive tried different combos and it doesnt work right. Maybe its junk? I'd like to make it work because it fits in my dash without cutting it up anymore. Any help would be appreciated. Also the power and amp wires are marked so I have those covered.
 
It has 2 power wires correct? yellow and red? (memory is always hot, the other is keyed power) that is a 4 channel, it should have another pair of speaker wires, maybe white and purple?
 
The power wires are marked, I just need the speaker wires figured out. there are four speaker wires two grey and two green.
 
gray should be one speaker and green another. tracer should go to - on the speaker. You should also have had a pair of white and a pair of purple speaker wires. I have a pioneer manual from a different model that shows the following:
white - left front
gray - right front
green - left rear
purple - right rear.
 
the tracer is the negative but it doesn't matter as long as you're consistent side-to-side. I want to say gray is right, green is left. Or, gray front, green rear if it's a mono deck.
 
No purple or white wires and nothing has been cut off. I have looked all over the internet and cant find anything on this stereo, too old????
 
Thats the one, I tried hooking the greys on one side and the greens on the other and nothing,
 
no idea... pioneer site looks like it does not have it. the caps may be dried out and it may not work at all.
 
Here are my thoughts.

Normally with most pioneers and all cd players for that matter.

Its normally yeloow as your constant power,red as key on,black as ground,solid blue as a remote amplifier/cd changer,blue with white stripe as power antenna (same thing as solid blue wire though) (you can also tap into the key on hot as a remote wire if for some reason your remote wire channel was not operating properly).....speaker wires are as was stated above for the color combo's.

NOW....with you only having the 2 sets of speaker wires instead of 4 .....its either that the plug in ports for the extra speaker wires are on the cd players "plug" but had been ripped out at one point? or its a much older unit that was a 2 speaker unit and both chanels are blown and not pushing the juice out to the speakers because of that.

OR its an odd ball unit.....which I have seen alot of stock stereos use....and I will explain how to test it.

take a battery or a car charger...anything that will give you 12 volts of power supply......twist your red and yellow wires (constant and key on hot) together.....this will trick the cd player into thinking the key is on when its not even installed in a vehicle, touch it to the positive terminal of the battery.....then touch your ground to the negative terminal of the battery ...(this should atleast tell you that the cd player powers on and that part of it is good...(that is if you do not already know if it powers on)....from this point is where the "odd ball" part comes into play.......It may be a "common ground" system.....and the two sets of speaker wires (a total of 4 wires) are in fact 4 positive terminals (1 for each positive side of the speaker)......what you need to do to test this theory is take one of your wires and run it to the positive terminal of one of your speakers.....THEN from the negative terminal on the same speaker run a wire to the cd players ground that you connected to get it to power on....(you may be able to use a chassis ground aswell but for trial and error purposes run it to the stereos ground so you KNOW its grounded with the head unit).....thats should tell you if the stereo is any good or not and it may just be an odd ball older design.

Hope that helps and sorry for the long explanation ....I just wanted to try and give you as much info as i could....if that doesnt do it and it does not have any inline fuses for speakers (which would be odd if it did anyhow) than its most likely a junk stereo....BUT you may be able to open it up and find that it had been over heated and the solder points had melted somewhere and crossed ....in which case you could scap the solder out that is bridging the gap.....or you may find a burned copper band on the green board.

stereos are pretty easy to work on after you have done neough of them and know what to look for.

GOOD LUCK and let me know if what I mentioned helped ya figure it out!
 
That is how I have it wired now using one of the grey and one of the green for left and right and it has a lot of background noise from the car. then it quits but the lights are still on the stereo, and it does have a inline fuse for the unit which has not blown.
 
That is how I have it wired now using one of the grey and one of the green for left and right and it has a lot of background noise from the car. then it quits but the lights are still on the stereo, and it does have a inline fuse for the unit which has not blown.

what I mean is run one of the colored speakers wire to the positive terminal of your speaker....and from the negative terminal of the speaker run a wire directly to the ground on your head unit..

if in fact it is a common ground stereo it will either not work or it will sound extreamly fuzzy with alot of noise or cut in and out or something along those lines if you do not have the negative terminal on your speaker grounded to a chassis ground or the ground at the stereo power/ground connections ground.

most stereos pick up there ground either through the antenna plug in or through a bolted chassis ground but a few different stereos used common grounds where the ground connection used for power was strictly used as a ground for power and was not associated with the speakers.

so if it is a common ground set up....and you have 4 speaker wires....there job is only to output power to the positive side terminal of each speaker they are connected to and you have to manually ground the second (negative terminal) seperatley.

hope that helps
 
I got what you are saying, thats how I have it hooked up only using one of the speaker wires for positive on each of the two speakers and the negative sides of the speakers to the ground screw for the ground for the stereo
 
If this stereo is used I would suggest taking it out and testing it. If you have 2 sets of wires then its a 2 channel radio. Which isnt uncommon for older tape decks

Solid Grey= Positive Hook to positive terminal on Speaker
Grey/tracer = negative Hook to negative on terminal.

If you have a car battery you can check this and make sure the outputs arent blown on the radio its not uncommen. Since people often used the 2 channel to run 4 speakers thus dropping the Ohm load and just simply not enough power. Just need some wire aligator clips and a speaker. If it works then its good. If not then the outputs are blown.
 
what kind of speakers are you testing that with....could be just too much speaker for too little power
 
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