Head Unit Install

[JDMSilviaSpecR]

I got my 96 240sx about a month ago and came with a ****ty stock tape deck. I know the previous owner had a cd player in there bcuz I saw cut outs for subs in the back and when I replaced the front right speaker I noticed it was an aftermarket speaker. I took my old head unit (cd player) out of my crashed 95 240sx and tried installing it in my 96 240sx. I put in three wires. The 2 huge clunker which I'm guessing connects to my speakers and then the black one right next to it which I'm guessing is the power. The antenna wire doesnt fit but do I need that for the cd player to work? Am I forgetting about any other wires? I checked the audio fuses and they aren't blown. Any help would be appreciated.

[andrave]

first off, your cd player might have been damaged in the crash. test it someplace reliable to see if its working at all.
second, you will need an antenna adaptor if you want to plug your antenna in (but you don't need that to listen to cd's).
I don't have an s14 but seeing as black is almost universally ground, I'd say you have the wrong wires hooked up.
go buy a 20 dollar digital multimeter from walmart and put it on the wires to check.

[scandalcat1]

O.K. concerning your unit install. I initially had problems and here is the jist of all:
The previous owner had wires going everywhere so i ripped out the old JVC head unit and proceeded by adding mine. He had already replaced all of the factory speakers with the exception being the tweeters, which I will replace this weekend.
The antenna is two pronged with the shorter being the ground. I already had an adapter for that but I have made one for a maxima if you don't want to buy one, just splice them together.
I hooked up the yellow (memory constant)
red (switched ignition) and just for kicks, the black ground (was not needed because of the antenna). Power came on just barely to see the faceplate light up with 0000 0000, I thought Oh Sh** and thought I fried it. After taking a multimeter, i found that the yellow constant fromt he wiring harness was only pushing 6v and even after trying my old nakamichi to verify, it would'nt work either. So I wired a small 16gauge piece of wire from the battery (with a .5a fuse to be safe) to the yellow constant on the stereos. Stereo turned on and had memory, checked with multimeter and showing 11.5v, good.
Plugged in the speakers ( after bypassing the stock amps) and was enjoying my tunes.

[scandalcat1]

Also, do everything with the ground off the battery or disconnected. Common knowledge and you also should make sure if u have a high powered stereo, to not cross any speaker wires to chassis or anything but the speaker posts, you will have a burned out amp. Just for redundancy, ground the black wire to one of the bolts on the chassis like right behind the shifter

[jsr20det]

scandalcat, I almost had the same experience. I thought i connected everything right and turned it on, but it turned on barely and shut down again. So i moved the battery, accessory to the backup battery and now it works, but there is no memory. I let the ground wire just sit out there with electrical tape on it.

Is this why my head unit has no memory? Because the ground wire isnt connected to anything? Thx alot.

[scandalcat1]

You need to wire a constant memory directly from the battery to the yellow wire on the H/U. To be safe I would add a fuse inline like, say .5a. I drilled a hole through my firewall right behind the master cyclinder for my 4 guage power cable for my amps and the direct memory cable.

The antenna has the ground built into in. If you buy the adapter, you should be fine. From what you are telling me however, it sounds like you already have a ground somewhere. Just run the cable for the memory and the stereo will power up fine.

[SR240DET]

to test it out to see if it works.... take your harness on your head unit... ground it somewhere... to the negative part of the batt. and place the power to the positive part of the batt. that way you can see if it will work.. if nothing happends... then get a new one..

[scandalcat1]

Originally posted by SR240DET
to test it out to see if it works.... take your harness on your head unit... ground it somewhere... to the negative part of the batt. and place the power to the positive part of the batt. that way you can see if it will work.. if nothing happends... then get a new one..

Quick way to blow the radio, assuming that it does not have a fuse inline somewhere. And no, do not ground to the negative part of the battery, at least maybe the chassis

[JDMSilviaSpecR]

Okay, I found out I installed it correctly I just forgot to screw in the cd player for the groundings. Theres one thing wrong though, I can't put the volume too high. At a certain point the volume stops increasing and right now, the max is pretty damn quiet. Can I have some help one more time please? Thanks

[JDMSilviaSpecR]

Anyone? Help? Something?

[scandalcat1]

Make sure that you are bypassing the stock amps. It sounds like your stereo is outputting a powered signal to a clarion stock amp and I believe they are lowere resistance, (lower ohms). Then you should not have problems.

[JDMSilviaSpecR]

How do I bypass it? Sorry for being ignorant but I'm not good at this kind of stuff, but I've got this far with your guys' help so I'm sure I can do this with some instruction

[scandalcat1]

First of all, you need to replace the stock speakers. Then locate the speaker wires going into the amps on the doors and cut there. Then splice them into a 1.5 ft. length of 14AWG speaker wire and into the new speakers (assuming you are using a wiring harness behind the H/U.) The rear is easy, just do the same thing but I would recommend using the appropriate spade connectors for all connections to make it easy. As for the factory tweeters, I would purchase either the separates or some small tweeter to be able to mount in the factory location, using some sort of crossover or comparable bass blocker.