new car

Thanks so much for your help. Im feeling rusty... i havent done a stereo install in 20 years. The steering wheel stuff is new to me. I have done remote starts and backup cameras where I had to tap into a factory harness
 
Thanks so much for your help. Im feeling rusty... i havent done a stereo install in 20 years. The steering wheel stuff is new to me. I have done remote starts and backup cameras where I had to tap into a factory harness
Yeah this new stuff is a whole other league compared to old stuff unfortunately. Now days getting a radio stolen with wire snips behind the harness is almost a death sentence for the prospects of ever using the audio system again short of an insane bill and/or lots of failed attempts. I looked at a new chevy impala last week that had the factory radio cut out of it and someone had bought a harness from a local junkyard and poorly crimped every wire back on. It probably took them the whole day to do it and yet when I was done doing the harness work on the radio it didn't work because one of their connections was bad. I've got a lot of patience with radio harnesses outside of a car, but inside I just give up if it takes more than an hour with little progress.

Luckily there's a few companies that make adapters and harnesses, but I think the biggest downside of those companies is that in order to be economical they have to have one-size-fit-all solutions that work with tons of cars and that naturally leads to cracks where the instructions may not be so good for one model or maybe "this wire does nothing on 99.5% of car models of the last 20 years so we're going to require bodge work if they just happen to have that model." sort of stuff. I'm glad they exist but it's never going to go back to being as simple as it used to be.
 
This forum is really kind. A lot of times I get the "she's just a girl" vibe and not much help. I get the whole loose connection frustration. No matter what, even with good crimps/connectors I've ran into a mind-boggling loose connection somewhere. I've started soldering all of my connections.
 
This forum is really kind. A lot of times I get the "she's just a girl" vibe and not much help. I get the whole loose connection frustration. No matter what, even with good crimps/connectors I've ran into a mind-boggling loose connection somewhere. I've started soldering all of my connections.
I've encountered that all too often the issues with continuity are linked to cheap connectors. I've moved up to waterproof with silicone seals and it's worked out so far as well as hydraulically crimped butt connectors with heat shrink over them. Both of those are annoying without the right tools, but If you have to do normal hand crimps then bullet connectors with a little conductive grease on the male end and heat shrink as strain relief is pretty reliable. Tricks from working on trailer wiring which will fail if you just look at them the wrong way.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014IU2EE2/?tag=caraudiocom-20 (requires or at least highly benefits from terminal crimpers)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NB14C2C/?tag=caraudiocom-20 (The end of 12v conductivity bullcrap)

A dab'll do you on the conductive grease, be very careful with it since it's hard to wash off and it'll bridge connections through a thin film of it, but it works great and seals out the elements too even if there's barely enough of it to see. Soldering is my go-to for adapter to radio harnesses, but for speaker connections I always do plugs to avoid snipping things in the future, plus I hate soldering inside a vehicle.

The trick to finding a good quality crimp is that it doesn't have a seam and it's thick. These butt connectors for example are great in any of those sizes, I'd recommend them to anyone. Super thick and the metal will go airtight with the copper strands under hydraulic force without any cracking or deformation around a seam.


My experience with loose connectors has caused me to do multiple deep-dives but I think I'm finally seeing the light lol. Tinned copper is also a godsend and the result of another deep dive I did when I was young. Corroded copper makes crappy connections and it's worth the extra cost to never have to look at it again.
 
So now I'm finally at the point where I'm soldering all of the wires. I do have a couple of questions..
1. The black wire (ground) coming from the adapter says for Subaru only. Where does that ground go. Im thinking it needs to be pinned and go to the ground pin from the car. I have the pin layout from the car, but wanted to make sure which pin is the ground I want. (Picture attached)

2. The only wires I have left are the reverse signal from the head unit. Im not sure where it goes in this adapter.

3. Im also not sure where to connect the speed control wire.

I attached the table for the pins, but i want to be 100% sure.
22433
22434
 
So now I'm finally at the point where I'm soldering all of the wires. I do have a couple of questions..
1. The black wire (ground) coming from the adapter says for Subaru only. Where does that ground go. Im thinking it needs to be pinned and go to the ground pin from the car. I have the pin layout from the car, but wanted to make sure which pin is the ground I want. (Picture attached)

2. The only wires I have left are the reverse signal from the head unit. Im not sure where it goes in this adapter.

3. Im also not sure where to connect the speed control wire.

I attached the table for the pins, but i want to be 100% sure.

1. So from looking at that pinout it looks to me like the black wire on a Subaru needs to run to the harness maybe for some sort of sensing or fusing, but on other cars it's acceptable to just run it to the vehicle chassis. Use a terminal loop or alternatively you can add the pin and run it through the harness. There's not really a disadvantage to either way. A lot of radios have two ground points, one that goes to the harness (the car's official ground near the fuse box probably) and a terminal to hook directly to the radio cage which is well connected to the chassis. In general I think having 2 is good, but adding a pin in this case isn't necessary if it's just a ground point, just make sure you sand the location around the bolt you use to get a good connection.

2. Reverse signal may not be offered on the car since it doesn't have a reverse camera. It's there because the head unit supports one. When 12v is applied to that wire the camera will take over the screen of the device until the 12v signal is discontinued. There are alternative ways to accomplish this while wiring up a camera, so for now just leave it tied off.

3. The speed control wire if you're talking about where to connect the head unit's wire it'll be with light green, pin 18. If you're saying the head unit doesn't have a corresponding use for it that's most likely because while your stock radio had volume adjust with speed, the aftermarket unit doesn't. I personally find that to be an annoying feature to enable anyways, but theoretically it can save your volume knob some use. If your head unit doesn't support it then just tie it off.
 
Great information.. Imngoingntonleave off the reverse for now. Im wondering if there is a way to tie in at the shifter? The parking brake should be in the somewhere too.
 
Great information.. Imngoingntonleave off the reverse for now. Im wondering if there is a way to tie in at the shifter? The parking brake should be in the somewhere too.
The common way that I've seen it done is to use the reverse light circuit, where they'll splice (or adapter and splice the adapter) the light bulbs or some other point in that system which I believe does interact with the shifter at least on older cars. Now days it might be computer controlled. I believe on my car the only difference between park and drive is the illumination increases while parked. I'm not sure whether this has to do with the illumination line or a park sense, but it may be worth including to get that functionality back. Does the head unit have an option for that where it requests a brake sense line?
 
It has a wire for the parking signal, the speed signal, and the reverse signal.
It seems like they're usually included in the conversion harness, so it might get data from the ECU for those functions. If you can't find them on the adapter output plug then I would at least try giving 12v to the parking wire as well as the reverse wire separately to see what it does and if you care about that feature enough to route wires through the whole car potentially. As for the speed sense wire, that's just light green. VSS is the most important one of those because it apparently improves the accuracy of your navigation.

As for the brake light you can either run it through a bypass or use the brake lights circuit. The specific wiring diagram for your car's lighting system would be needed to figure out the best place to tap in for that voltage unless you go to the fusebox. My go-to would be a fuse tap if indeed you aren't given those cables through the adapter output.
 
So I installed the head unit today. What a pain in the butt. I had read all of the pins upside down. I should have looked at the connector from the car. Was not happy! Anyhow.. i had to remind a few if rhe connections.
I'm still having a few issues.
The pin for the speed control did not stay connected because of all of the putting and pulling out. I dont have it connected. I cant watch a DVD because it thinks I'm driving.
The steering wheel controls are not working. The unit alternately flashes from red to green. I will need to troubleshoot that.
I wasn't able to connect the Bluetooth to anything. I didnt see any form of connector in the car.
Anyhow.. im a bit frustrated. Although, it does seem to work and looks okay.
 
So I installed the head unit today. What a pain in the butt. I had read all of the pins upside down. I should have looked at the connector from the car. Was not happy! Anyhow.. i had to remind a few if rhe connections.
I'm still having a few issues.
The pin for the speed control did not stay connected because of all of the putting and pulling out. I dont have it connected. I cant watch a DVD because it thinks I'm driving.
The steering wheel controls are not working. The unit alternately flashes from red to green. I will need to troubleshoot that.
I wasn't able to connect the Bluetooth to anything. I didnt see any form of connector in the car.
Anyhow.. im a bit frustrated. Although, it does seem to work and looks okay.

Ouch, sounds like a typical install. In terms of the SWC it needs to be programmed, usually by doing some button holding procedure. Even if it's already custom programmed for you car there are different configurations for like when people want their push to talk button to do some other function instead for example.

The bluetooth is just the mic right? provided you have push to talk there should be a connector for it.
 
I donhave push talk, but i couldn't find the connector anywhere. That would definitely be helpful. On the SWC, I followed all of the programming steps and all I get is volume down, even when I press volume up. The preset changes the source. I'm also getting an error that one of the connections isn't connected. Im pretty sure it is though. I will have to look into it tomorrow.
 
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