have few questions before doing head unit install ?

[jwarren808 10+ year member]

i'm installing my first head unit and wanted to make sure i'm covering everything, not leaving anything out?

my car is a 1990 Honda CRX Si, a couple years ago my car was broken into and they stole my head unit and my amps and they cut the factory stereo harness plug off.

someone on the12volt forum pointed me towards the correct harnesses i needed for my car, so i got a metra 70-1720 harness adapter and a meta 71-1720 reverse wiring harness, and the new head unit i got is a Pioneer DEH-150MP.

i don't have amps or subs, its just going to be a head unit and 4 6.5" coaxial speakers in the stock locations, so nothing complicated.

i understand how to install the head unit, and am sure i can do it, but i just wanted to mainly cover some things before starting, just to make sure i understand everything correctly and am not forgetting anything ?

my first question is, since they cut my harness when stealing my last stereo, what things do i need to check that would be affected from that happening?, like any fuses blow? i should replace before starting install? or any other things to check ?

do i need to put a ground wire from the back of head unit to the body of the car ? on the new head unit i got? or not?

or is that only to get rid of ground noise problems?

theres a blue wire with white stripe coming from the pioneer head units harness and its labelled "system remote control", but the blue wire on the harness adapter and reverse wiring harness i got are labelled "power antenna", is that the same thing? or not?

also, theres an orange wire with a white stripe called "dimmer", coming from the harness adapter but there is'nt an orange wire on the pioneer wiring harness? so where would that orange wire connect to?

any help with these questions, would be appreciated, thanks

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[CrossoverOre 10+ year member]

first off good for you trying to get help before screwing something up instead of after the fact.There will typically be popped fuses if they cut all the wires at once when stealing the radio. if you lost your dome light at that time there is one fuse and sometimes the acc fuse wont blow because they dont have the key on when they cut the harness. But it may be from after the fact.

The blue/white wire off the pioneer is used for amp turn on and if your vehicle has a power antennae its used for that as well. if you have no amp or power antennae then just tape those up. Same for the orange/white wire for the illumination. as for the ground you can use the factory wire in the harness for ground or you can run a new one. Either way will work.

 

[jwarren808 10+ year member]

thanks for replying, i will check fuses, i replaced dome light fuse a while ago, and i am not using an amp or anything to turn it on remotely, so don't need blue wire, and i'll cap it off, and my car does'nt have a power antenna either,

some people said the orange/white "dimmer/illumination" wire would connect to an illumination input terminal, which would be on some pioneer head units, but if it does'nt have such input on your head unit, to just not connect to anything, and i did'nt see any input on mine?, but my head unit does have a feature where you can adjust the brightness level of the display illumination, and i was wondering if that wire has anything to do with that ? cause i do want to be able to use that feature and adjust how bright it is ?

so if it has that feature, would'nt there be somewhere that orange wire is supposed to connect to on the head unit harness ? or head unit ?

as far as the black ground wire, i see that theres a black ground wire coming out of the pioneer wire harness, and also that theres a black ground wire on the harness adapter also, but i don't understand how you i would ground it ? do you mean splice a wire coming off of the black ground wire in the harness and connect it to the chassis/body ? or if i were to run a new ground wire, where would i connect it on the back of the head unit ? i see some screws on the back, but are there certain spots meant to run a ground wire from ? thanks

 

[jwarren808 10+ year member]

i ended up figuring everything out, i used a multimeter to test and find out which wire was for ignition and constant on the stock harness, and i found where the wire for my antenna was, and hooked it to the head unit, i grounded the black wire from the pioneer harness directly to a bare sanded metal spot on the chassis, and put electrical tape around the wire and wire loom to protect it, and i made sure all the wire connections were good and also put electrical tape and wire loom to protect as much of it as possible.

then hooked the battery back up and turned the key to "on", and the head unit came on and worked !!!, so i was happy i did it right, plus the clock and dome light worked again, so it did'nt blow the fuse this time, maybe cause i moved and organized the wires better.