what's up YouTube today we're going to
be installing a car stereo without the
factory wiring harness
[Music]
you
alright guys so if your vehicle wiring
harness has been cut you're going to
have the directly wire your radio wiring
harness to the vehicle wiring inside the
car now this can be kind of overwhelming
if you don't understand how to test
these wires to be able to properly hook
each wire up so what we're going to do
is cover some of the tools and some of
the tricks to getting this done all
right so we're going to install this
Kenwood stereo here let's get this thing
unboxed and get right to it alright so
first things first you've got to
understand what all these wires are so
we've got the harness here for this
Kenwood receiver and since we don't have
a factory wiring harness adapter what
we're going to do is directly wire these
wires directly to the cars wiring so I
always start with the power wires first
what you have here is you have your
yellow which is your cost of power you
have your red which is your switched or
accessory and your ground those are the
main power wires that you need to hook
up in some cases if you have an orange
wire that means you need to hook it up
to the lights that way the lights dim
when you turn the headlights on on the
car the other wires you've got here this
is a steering wheel control input now if
you are having steering wheel controls
and you want an adapter to hookup you
would use this this is for your power
antenna or power amplifier turn on
you've got a mute if you're hooking up a
hands-free cell phone kit it has this
automatic mute function that will mute
the radio when a call comes in and the
rest here you've got green you've got
white purple and gray now these are
going to be your speaker wires
[Music]
all right so the first thing we need to
do is remove this stereo so we can wire
in the new one alright guys so this is
an older Alpine stereo that's in here
and I'm going to swap it out with a
little bit more modern Kenwood because
the USB port stopped working on this so
you could no longer hook it up to a
phone for music alright guys so on this
one here the shop that put this in use
the wiring harness so you've got this
wiring adapter here along with the
harness that plugs into the radio we're
going to demonstrate how to wire the
radio without one of these connectors
here a lot of the older vehicles out of
the 80s and the 70s you're not going to
have these connectors anymore and in
many in the 90s and the 2000s a lot of
them have been cut off because somebody
put a stereo and it didn't have an
adapter or maybe you just plan out don't
want to use an adapter I'm going to show
you guys how to wire it up not using the
adapter so what I'm going to do here is
I'm going to cut this connector off to
show you guys how to wire the radio up
when you don't have the connector there
now when cutting this off I recommend
cutting one wire at a time the reason
for that is is if you connect the
constant power wire with the crimp tool
and you cut through them all at the same
time you'll actually send power down to
the other wires just by making the
connection through the crimp tool you
decided to cut all of them at the same
time you might pop the fuse going to the
constant wire alright guys so if you're
in a situation where your car harness
has been cut and all you have is a bunch
of bare wires here what you've got to do
is determine which wire is what so that
you could properly wire this up alright
so the first thing that you want to
start with is by determining your power
wires now to do this you have to have a
test line or a multimeter I prefer to
the test light because it's a lot easier
and quicker to use so you take this end
here and put it somewhere on a bare
metal an area that's going to make a
good ground connection I can see back
here there's a fair piece of metal that
I should be able to
this too and get a good ground if you
don't have a good ground on this the
test light's not going to light up okay
now what you want to do is strip each
wire back do this about a half of an
inch okay so now what you've got to do
is take your test light and touch each
one of the wires with the test light and
tell lights up all right at this point I
don't have the ignition on I don't have
the headlights on I don't have anything
on the car is basically off so the only
wire out of all these wires here that
I've got stripped back that should have
power on it is going to be our main
constant wire that goes directly to the
battery so if you touch each one of
these wires here you can see that the
test light is not lighting up once you
get down to this one here it lights up
now you know you've found your constant
power wire this goes directly to the
battery and you want to be real careful
not to let these wires touch each other
because if that constant wire were to
touch anything else it would put power
down whatever other wire that would be
there and could possibly short that out
so you want to be careful with that to
make sure that the constant wire doesn't
touch it in if you go around the test
light and you cannot find any power on
any of the wires it's likely that you
have a blown fuse and a lot of times
they time the dome light with the cost
of power wire so make sure you check the
radio or the dome light fuse first to
make sure that you don't have a blown
fuse if you can't find any power on any
of the wires so what I'm going to do is
take the constant wire and twist it
together with the yellow wire on the
radio wiring harness twist that together
put a white cap on there the high
quality crimp tool
and now you've made your constant
battery connection now it's time to find
your switch box you do this by taking
your key put it in the ignition and turn
it to the on position without starting
the car now you're going to find the
ignition switch or accessory wire let's
go through okay right there so we can
see that one's lighting up now let's
hold our test light on the wire there
and then we'll turn the key off okay we
can see that the light turns out with
the key now we know we have our
accessory power take the red wire twist
it together with your accessory wire
that you found on the vehicle and go
ahead and twist those together and white
cap that connection as well now there's
also going to be wires or a wire that
sends electricity down it when the
headlights on this is called the
illumination wire the illumination wire
will send power to the car stereo to
tell the stereo that the headlights are
on what it does is it dims the lights
and the radio slightly for driving at
night the radio that we're installing
doesn't actually have that feature so we
won't be hooking that up but I do want
to locate that wire to show you guys if
your car stereo that you're putting in
has an orange illumination wire you're
going to want to hook that up as well so
what I'm going to do is I'm going to
switch the headlights on the vehicle
I've got the headlights on I'm going to
look for a wire that is now lit lit not
okay so right there this red and black
wire right here we can see is lighting
up our test light so let's verify that
this shuts on and off with the light so
I'm going to turn the headlights off
turn the headlights on okay so now we
know that that is our illumination wire
it's very important that you cap this
wire off if you're not going to use it
because if you leave this wire bare
inside the dash while you're driving
with your headlights on it could short
out to something metal in the dash and
cause your headlights to not work so
make sure you cap any unused wire off
that you're not
going to use okay so as another
precaution I like to turn the ignition
on turn the headlights on and go through
and touch each one of these wires to
make sure we don't have any power on
them alright guys so none of these wires
have any power on them I've gone through
and checked each one of them with the
headlights on with the ignition on
obviously with it hooked up to the
battery the rest of these wires are dead
they don't have any power going to them
okay so now what we've got to do is find
our ground wire and to do this we're
going to take the wire and stick it into
our constant power on our radio wiring
harness so I'm going to jam it in here
in the back so it doesn't fall out what
this is going to do is give us an
extension of power so then we take this
end of the test light and hook it to the
end of the wire that we've jammed into
the constant wire now if you take this
test light and you touch it on something
metal it's going to light up because
it's going to verify that to ground soil
so if you touch this on something metal
behind there you can see the test light
lights up that's a ground that's a metal
spot that's actually making ground
connection now find the wire that lights
up when you touch it on the ground so
you can see this black wire here they
conveniently made the black wire ground
on this car so that's the first one I
went to the rest of the wires you can
see are not lighting up the reason why
they're not lighting up is they're not a
ground connection so we're going to use
this black wire for the ground alright
guys so you can see this little
contraption that I made here so this is
how you're going to determine the
speaker wires you take a little 9-volt
battery and you take a couple alligator
clips like this here and you go ahead
and hook them up to the battery so you
put the negative on the negative and the
positive on the positive and see I've
got this green wire wired up here to the
positive terminal of the speaker now
I've got the ground hooked up to the
ground side of the battery and when I
touch these two wires together it's
going to make the speaker make a little
pop sound okay so you can hear the
little bit of sound that happens when
you hook this up to it so this is going
to allow you to be able to determine
which wires are what inside the vehicle
so you're going to hook this up the same
way in the car you're just going to
determine the location of the speaker's
by listening for the sound as you touch
each one of the wires so one thing to
note watch the speaker what moves okay
with it hooked up correctly with the
negative on the negative and the
positive and positive you can see that
the speaker moves out that means that
the speaker is in proper phase and that
you've got the polarity correct what
happens when you reverse it so let's
take the positive and we will put this
positive on the negative and we'll put
the negative on the positive now watch
closely when I touch the wire together
watch which direction the speaker
initially moves when I touch the wire
see how the speaker action moves in so
I'm going to touch it
speaker moves in rather than out that
means you've got it hooked up backwards
so that's how you determine the polarity
of the speaker so if you don't know
which one's positive you don't know
which one is negative know that if
you've got your positive negative hooked
up correctly on your battery and you
hook these up you can see that the
speaker is now going to move out when I
hook this up see how that speaker pushes
up that's properly in phase if you hook
these wires up backwards in the car
you'll have your left speaker moving in
and your right speaker moving outward
and you're going to make the sound
really distorted and the bass is going
to sound horrible if you want to make
sure that you have the polarity hooked
up correctly so the speakers are all
moving the same direction at the same
time alright guys so now what you've got
to do is determine your speaker wires so
you've got the remaining wires here left
and you can see that I've got two four
six eight wires which is exactly the
amount of speaker wires for a four
speaker system so we know which
at our power wires hooked up now now
we're down to the speaker wires you can
see that there's a little bit of white
tape on these wires here this tells me
that from the factory this is probably a
pair so this is probably a pair and this
is probably a pair so what I'm going to
do of course we've got our little
battery here hooked up with these cables
what I'm going to try first is the ones
that have little tape on there all right
I can hear that little bit of a pop
there that's coming from the left rear
speaker now what you've got to do is
determine which wire is which as far as
the polarity now this is really hard to
do because these speakers are in the
doors so in order to watch the speaker
move in and out you have to pull the
door panels off so what I've done is
I've jumped on a forum to determine
which wire is what a lot of websites
arrow out there will give you the colors
polarity wise on a car so what you're
going to do on the radio wiring harness
is take and strip the green wires back
because we're going to be hooking up the
left rear speaker at this point so again
make sure that you've got the positive
on the positive so that you get a proper
sound and everything is in phase so I'm
going to start with the blue and yellow
wire and hook that up to our green wire
now every car is different so just
because these colors are what it is on a
Honda Pilot doesn't mean it's going to
be that way on a Chevy Blazer or a Ford
Escort so make sure that you're testing
each wire individually because even
through the years a 2010 pilot might be
different than a 2004 pilot I found lots
of websites that have radio wiring
diagrams that give you which wire is
what I'll put those in the link or the
description below the video I'll put
some of those I'll link those so that
you guys can check those out if you want
to verify your vehicle a lot of times
the wiring colors will be on there the
player tees and the positives negatives
power wire speaker wires all that again
I can't stress the clarity enough you
can hook the speaker's up backwards and
it will work you will get sound out of
it but it won't sound as good as it
should so make sure that you have
each speaker in-phase alright guys my
camera keeps shutting off because it's
freaking hot in my garage and my camera
is overheating it's like the fourth of
July and 100 million degrees and I've
got the door shut so it's like freaking
hot is crapping here so I apologize that
my camera keeps shutting down here but
we're down to the live right front
speaker we're going to verify that we're
getting a speaker pop out of the right
front hear that pop there that's the
right front door so we're going to hook
this up and that's it
we've got all the wires just about
hooked up with these last two here now
this car does have steering wheel
controls and this radio has the ability
to hook up an interface that allow it to
communicate with the steering wheel
controls we're not going to do that in
this video we'll save that for a later
video coming up so all the wiring is
pretty much complete so this wire here
would be the one that we would hook up
for the steering wheel controls now you
do have to have an interface for that
and there's a little wire here that we
hook up put a little interface in there
I'll show you how to do that this mute
wire would be for a hands-free kit on a
foam kit that's used virtually not
anymore because we have so much
Bluetooth stuff that we don't ever use
that anywhere so we've got all our
connections made we've got all the wires
capped off that we're not using and this
radio is wired up alright guys so now
we're down to one final step that I like
to do to clean things up and that is to
take some electrical tape and wrap it
around the wires just to give it a nice
clean install you can see that factory
wiring comes out of that electrical tape
covered in another rubber sheet of
protectant there that keeps the wires
protected and properly organized so we
can kind of continue that along with
some electrical tape all that's really
doing is keeping the wires tightly
together so they don't get wrapped
around anything
then we're going to take this wire here
that would be for our steering wheel
controls and we're just going to take
that back on to the factory wiring
harness like that take your radio and
plug it in there
plug your antennae and don't forget to
do that otherwise you can't have a radio
reception and let's verify this thing
works
dickie turn it on see things are
starting to light up here press volume
knob to cancel demo yes bill on demo
mode music July 14th through the 16th on
multiple stages great entertainment
alright alright so you can see that's
working let's make sure we're going to
turn the headlights on make sure our EO
doesn't shut off or do anything weird
and that's working correctly we're going
to make sure that the stereo turns off
with the ignition so we turn the key off
that turns off now we're going to turn
the ignition back on and make sure that
it stayed on the same radio station so
that we know that we've got our costs of
power hooked up okay it stayed on the
tuner 97 9 which is what it was on
before so we know that the radio was
wiring correctly I can hear all the
sound out of all four speakers it does
sound correctly so I know everything is
in phase shut up on and off with the key
nothing happens when you turn the
headlights on which is what we want it
to because this doesn't have an
illumination wire add an illumination
why are these lights with dim when we
turn those on but this stereo doesn't
have that feature in it so that's it
that's how you wire up a radio when you
don't have a wiring harness adapter
alright guys so we've got the factory
radio trim piece put back on we've got
the dash kit in there we've installed a
little trim ring that holds our that
radial sleeve rather that holds the
radio secured into the aftermarket dash
kit now all we do is plug the radio in
make sure you get your antenna hooked up
and slide it in the slot that's it
alright guys thanks for watching DIY
bride make sure you give the video a
thumbs up if you liked it and consider
subscribing I do all types of DIY type
projects around the house the cars
stereo systems whatever so make sure you
stay tuned for my upcoming videos I also
have links below the video that have you
know pertaining information other
additional videos that may be helpful to
you I also have links over Amazon for
some of the tools and products that we
installed into this particular car so
make sure you check out those links and
keep doing those do it yourself projects