So I'm trying to swap out an old Alpine cd player that doesn't work anymore and I have a new Alpine CD102. I ran into a problem with the wiring.

I was able to get the unit powered and running, but when it came time to hook up the speakers, I'm not finding the usual wires for speakers positives and negatives.

There is a six pin plug that doesn't seem to effect the speakers. Could this be an equalizer wiring unit?

It is an eight speaker system (three on the door and one in the back under the window x2).

Have been at it for hours.

Any help would be appreciated. This seems different than the other years threads that I have read.

Thanks

 

You are probably looking at the booster conenction on the M490 option Sound Package. Its not quite as straight forward as the non M490 wiring, but its still do-able. Do you have the wiring diagram from the FSM, that will be invaluable for you. If you don't have it, let me know and I will see what I can dig up for you.

 

Thanks. From everything I have found on here, it is the M490 sound system. I don't have the wiring schematics. If it is easy for you to get, it would be greatly appreciated, but if you want to tell me where I should be able to find it, I can do that as well. Since I'm in Germany, I may have access to some great info. The only downside is that everyone at the Porsche dealer here speaks German! My German is ok, but it is still a bit frustrating.

 

Shoot me your email and I will send you something that should do the trick. I'd post it here but am unsure of the copyright status of doing so.

 

Awesome. bhelenius@yahoo.com

Thanks

 

Email sent.

 

I don't know how the M490 system's wiring works, but on a complicated audi sound system I just wired, the 2 rear speakers shared one negative lead, and the positive leads were connected to pre-amp outs because the rear speakers have built-on amps. Anyway maybe some of your wires have similar tricks. I don't think I would have figured it out without a diagram I found online.

Can't you tell which wires were for the speakers by looking at how they connect to the old radio?

Welcome to Rennlist! We love Horizon Blue here! Please post some pics!

 

Okay, I did a little more digging into this. Without the benefit of actually seeing it in person, I will offer the following caveat... if you burn your car/house/sister up because you followed these instructions, I will take ZERO responsibility for it.

However, I think this is what you need...

Front speakers will come off of the back side of the booster connection, so you *should* be able to find a multi-pin connector that has them ( either an 8 or 10 pin connector). The front left speaker uses a white wire for + and a brown w/white stripe wire for neg (pins 5 and 6 respectively) The front right speaker uses a black wire for + and a brown w/black stripe for neg (pins 3 and 4 respectively).

You *might* be able to get the front speakers off the 10 pin connector that plugged into the head end, using the black wire (pin 9) for front left and the red wire (pin 7) for front right. The problem is that it looks like the front speakers are grounded through the booster, so you'd have to mess with the wiring a bit to see if it grounds the speakers properly. I am sure you'd be better off taking the front speakers off the booster connector rather than the head unit connector.

The rear speakers appear to be wired directly to the original radio head unit on a 10 pin connector, and the rear left speaker uses a black w/white stripe wire for + (pin 10), the rear right speaker uses a black w/green stripe wire for + (pin 8). They each use a brown wire for neg that shares a common connection coming off the head unit, so most likely, you will just see one brown wire coming off that connector (pin 5).

I would strongly advise that you check the wires for continuity and voltage (there shouldn't be any voltage!) from the speakers to connectors, just to make sure you you have the right wires. If you have any questions about your abilities to do this, you might seek out a local that has some experience. Since you have a copy of the wiring diagram, they would probably make short (no pun intended!) work of this. Otherwise, at least try to get someone else on Rennlist with a copy of the FSM to confirm my info. I didn't do all that great in my electrical eng classes in college, which is why I was majoring in mechanical eng. lol FWIW, Arash's post above correlates very closely to what I found on the schematic.

Good luck and let us know how it turns out!

 

when it comes to radio wiring issues, i say just take it to a qualified installer. they practically work for food. shorting out your radio even at the "output" end may present an unnecessary risk to your wiring harness. to me, not worth it. just my $ 0.02.

 

Its not that big of a deal. A little bit of common sense and ohms law goes a long way.

 

The biggest headache is that there are external amplifiers involved with the M490 system. The rear speakers have integrated amplifiers. The front door speakers are run off an seperate 2-channel amp under the passenger seat. I dug around a little to figgure out how I could use the existing amp and speaker set up, but gave up. As far as I could tell (and I couldn't confirm this) the door speaker amplifier takes a speaker level input signal (using the amplifiers built into the head unit) while the rear speakers take a line level.
I ended up scrapping the factory speakers altogether and installed new two-way component speakers in the doors and coaxials in the back, so I really went from a 10-speaker setup to a "more or less" 8 speaker, depending on if you count a coax as 1 or 2 speakers. I added a ninth in the form of a bazooka tube (on it's own amp) that took over the spare tire well. There are plenty of wires running from the dash to the doors and rear speaker locations, so I just used the existing harnesses. I did have to run new line level wires back from the sub-out on the radio to the bazooka tube.

 

You guys are too much!! This is the best forum I have ever been apart of. I last had a VW Touareg and let's just say there were a few issues with that vehicle when it came out and I was on VW Vortex all the time. That was a pretty good forum, but you guys are killer.

I'm going to give it one last shot with all the new info from my buddy scott and see if I can't make the last 6 hours I spent on this worth it. If not, I may seek out a pro that could handle this better than I can.

I'm feeling pretty confident about future projects because of what I see here.

Will post some pics on the forum to show off my new girl.

Thanks guys.