I finally bought a Bekker CD player (from a '97 Carrera) for my 944S2 to replace the crapped out Kenwood tape deck, and I found a mess of wiring behind it... Worst install job I've ever seen. The wires were literally twisted and wrapped in electrical tape and he'd hacked the harness... so I got a new VW harness and in the process of installing it.

I have found everything, but WHICH WIRE IS FOR SWITCHABLE POWER???

Any input appreciated!

See attached pic (ball of wires... thought much cleaner now). The wires on the left side are all for the speakers. The wires on the right (going to white plug) are for everything else. I have constant power and ground, which you can see with the blue conncectors on, but need to find a wire for SWITCHABLE POWER.

 

Right off hand, I wouldn't know which one by sight, but I bet you can find it quick enough using a 12volt test light or multimeter, providing the radio relay is good.

 

Typically Porsche uses BROWN/red as switched power. I am moving up to Seattle in a few days...any other 944 people there?

 

The green/white is switched.
The full red is constant.
The brown is ground.

Don't forget to connect that thin black wire coming out of the antenna wire to the switched power, or you'll have no radio reception.

 

Mine is red... I used a voltage meter to test it with key in and then key out to see which it was.

 

I feel the pain, the previous owner of my car did similar work too the wiring harness. I really dont understand why 'they' always seem to think endless amounts of electrical tape are a cure all solution for everything. The PO had spliced in speaker wires literally right in the center of the existing with a bunch of electrical tape. Why it was done like this is a mystery to me. It was then wrapped a dozen or so times in electrical tape. After finally getting all the tape out this is what i was left with....



After witnessing this wiring, i vowed to never halfass anything like that on this car ever again.



I still need to figure out what all the cables attached to the positive battery clamps are for. I think they are too a now defunct alarm system. I will be removing the old siren and whatever else was related to the damned thing sometime this week.

 

I have a diagram for an 88S, looking at that, I agree with Cyrus951. It shows some kind of plug or jumper marked T30, probably very close by that may be out or open if you are not getting switched power on the gr/w.

Good luck with it!

Lou

 

Yikes, that looks almost as bad as the install on the deck when I bought mine. Anyways, I found the adapter plug to go from the Japanese style back to the OEM plug for the antenna, and a bunch of misc VW connectors and got I spent a lot of time sorting out the wiring and connecting them to the new harness connectors with marine grade snap connectors! Love those things.

Anyways, the stereo installation is complete. I finnished it up last night. Oh, and thanks for the obvious solution. I forgot I had a 12V light meter... but your post jogged my memory (had never used it before). It made quick work of identifying the wire for switched power. It was a green and white striped one in my S2.

Well, check out the pics of my install. Much cleaner, and the unit looks OEM stock. Also, the previous owner installed some Boston Accoustics speakers in the front doors and so I'm amazed at how well this little stereo sounds!

See below:

 

Looks good! Now, I just need to get rid of that old Blaupunkt in my '85, and it'll be a sounding/looking good too. I too, can relate to all the hacked up wiring behind the radio and such. Then I got a good look behind the dash,when I had it out on my '83, and OMG, the PO must have been outta his mind, with some of the things, and repairs they did. Glad to hear ya got it all sorted out.

 

Wow I like that unit, has a stock look to it, with the porsche name and all.

 

Yea, I like the looks of it. It looks stock, yet brings a modern touch to the interior. I bought the unit off Ebay for like $150, which seemed pretty good. Getting all the wiring plugs for it took a while, but found an installer guy who had a bunch of this crap sitting in bins and he gave them to me to get it working.

 

Looks nice. Does it have a jack for an auxilary input, like a MP3 player?


Do all the 944 models have a radio relay?