andyww

Here is a little trick for identifying speaker wires. Take a 9-volt battery. When you get two wires that go to a speaker it will make a very slight "pop" sound. Once you have identified the speaker that the wires go to. connect and disconnect the battery. If when you hook the speaker up the speaker moves "out" you have the polarity correct. If the speaker moves in then you have it backwards...

Hope this helps.

comicbook8

i had same problem myself ,the best way to do this is wire new cables from stereo head unit to under seat 4 pairs . cut and redo all old wiring and put in new connectors under seat , all speaker wires go back to under seat from speakers to identify speakers 9v battery trick as mentioned before . make sure the fader is not connected to anything .

yaskota

Let me know how this is going for you as I could do a pretty precise 1-to-1. My PO had installed a Nak 35z and I just finished installing a Toronto on my 84 US S; still I hooked up to the OE wiring as best as possible. My only holdup was waiting for my fluke to arrive so I could check my two reds for switched & constant. ;-) -yaskota

j.kenzie@sbcglobal.net

Hi Yaskota,
I would get a test light. It looks like a small screwdriver with a light in the handle, and a wire with an alligator clip. You clip the wire to a ground and when you touch a live 12 volt wire with the tip of the tester, the light in the handle lights up. It costs less than $5, and most all of yoour wires will either be 12 volts or nothing. It would definitely tell you constant vs switched 12 volts.
Good luck,
Dave

yaskota

Thanks Dave. I still have the one I made in high school! I gave in to getting my own multimeter tho as I also (still) dabble in tech (lots of things to measure and check) and will be doing quite a bit of electrical stuff yet ahead in life in general.

My install works beautifully, btw. But now it's on to checking the PO's RF Punch 150 connections and getting the PO's double-ended passive bazooka tube up and running.

The Forgotten On

Thank you for the picture Dave. Nice to see others trying to figure out the same issue as me, although I have no speakers in the car.

Time to break out the multimeter