|
howto determine speaker polarity/radio wiring tips
I just wanted to give some very helpful tips to avoid electrical hazards when wiring in a cd player, but these tips can be applied to other tasks such as illumination in performance gauges. Now, first things first. DO NOT USE WIRE NUTS FOR ELECTRICAL CONNECTIONS IN AUTOMOBILES. Wire nuts are not intended for cars because of the excessive vibrations which can cause the nuts to fall off, leaving a nice exposed connection just waiting to blow a fuse or, in some extreme cases, damage to the car or electrical devices. Try using butt connectors or solder and tape for all connections. Now, when installing a radio and you don't have a harness or diagram, the first thing you do is identify the 12v+ constant, 12v+ acc, ground, and illumination wires. DON"T CUT THE PLUG OFF YET! Leave the plug in and solder to wires behind the plug(about an inch to 1 1/2" away from plug. If you don't know how to solder, I suggest you learn how to, but still leave the plug in for now. To find illumination wires, connect the red probe of your multimeter to the wire you are testing(you can just probe the plug for now and write down the wire color coming out of the pin on the other side) and connect the black probe to a ground in the car(the metal frame of the dash around the radio will do) and set your meter to 12v constant. Now, check the reading on the meter to see what the wire rests at; it'll probably show ground. Now, turn the key in the ignition, and observe the meter again. Now, turn the parking lights on. If the wire is an illumination wire, your meter should show 12v+ with the lights on. Now, to test if it is a dimmer wire, use the dimmer switch and dim the interior lights. If this wire is the dimmer wire, the voltage will drop. Some radios have connections that you can hook up. Be sure to make sure whether the radio wants a dimmer or illumination connection. There is a difference.
On our cars, it is pretty easy to identify the speaker wires (They are like colors). But, you won't know the speaker polarity, so to determine speaker polarity, take your remaining wires(their should be 8 to 12) and a 9 volt battery and 'pop' the speakers. Now, you may need a friend to do this, but you want to have someone observe the speaker while you pop it to see which way the speaker is going. When you pop the speaker, you want the cone to push out towards you. Two benefits from doing this is you will be able to identify where the speakers are in the car and you will not have to worry about wiring one of the speakers out of phase. Once you identify the polarity of just one speaker, you should be able to identify the positive and negative wires of the rest by color code on the wires.
I hope some of these tips help keep your connections sound and safe.
I'm getting tired of typing, so I'll probably add some more stuff if I think of something I missed. I'll try to get some pics to post to on some of this stuff.
|
