novice fitting a stereo - advice please

[stuartp]

A friend gave me his old stereo (it's not one of these simple DIN modern ones and besides old Ford's obviously don't have those attachments anyway) to put in my car (mk1 Escort) until I can afford to buy a new one

 

I haven't fitted a stereo to a car for donkeys years and I was never all that good with wires in the first place.

 

Am i right in thinking i just need to connect one wire to a permanent live and one to the ignition, an earth and then obviously the speakers

(there's a fuse in the back of the stereo itself which i guess takes care of that part?) i'll need to plug the aerial in too

 

there was nothing fitted in my car when i got it but there was an aerial so it must have had something in there once but a quick poke around under the dash didn't leave me too confident about what to wire up to where

 

basically i'm nervous and i just want some encouraging words or advice so that i'm not going to stop all the elecrtics working in my car by fiddling

[capri.kid87]

Hi mate,

 

Ok so the older the easier in my view, I started with a MK1 Escort with 2 speakers and by the end had 6 speakers, 2 subs and an amp.

 

Your correct you just need the earth, perminant feed and ignition feed (you could miss the ignirtion and do both perminant). Connect the three up and repeat with speakers and your done. If you wire it only to the perminatn live just remember to turn it off.

 

You might have to make mounting brackets for it depending how much of a dash you have. I have the orginal MK1 escort stero and drop down surround in the loft if your interested?

 

Ant

[stuartp]

cool

 

just going for two old 6x9 speakers in the rear side panels for now, i'll add some more in the future but i want to get it working first - then i'll think about bringing on the heavy bass!

 

not too fussed with the stereo turning off when the ignition is turned off - especially if it's easier without

 

i bought a cheapo centre console to put the head unit in so that's sorted - thanks for the offer though mate.

 

ta for the advice

[lotusless]

send me a p.m m8 with your address + if your not too far

from me i'll come + fit it for you (or help you do it) no charge

[stuartp]

as i feared

 

couldn't find anything that looked a likely candidate to plug into, no evidence of any previous stereo (apart from an earth)

 

while i was there i thought i'd see if i could get my washer / wiper pedal thing to work - someone had plugged it in wrong so i changed it over and it worked

 

unfortunately then none of my dash dials worked (except the oil)

 

tried putting it back how it was before but nothing

 

thought i'd at least have the washer / wiper thing working again so put it back and now that doesn't work either

 

so i have given up for tonight

 

frustrated

[capri.kid87]

wow sounds like you got some really electrical problems. I never had problems on my escrot that bad but I found one brake light was wired across to the other to pas an MOT which was a bit daft the only thing I would suggest is get hold of a ahynes manual, take the dash out (or close to) and look at the wires and trace all of it back to find the fault.

 

yes long and boring but the car will deffinatly feel yours after you put the work in

[stuartp]

with the kind help of lotusless who came to my rescue like a knight in satin black cortina shaped armour i have pretty much everything back working now

 

looks like the indicator flasher unit thing under the dash is knackered though so i'll be getting a new one of them from somewhere and hopefully i'll get slower and clicking indicators again.

 

the foot washer wiper thing blew another fuse when we tried it again so i'm going to leave that off for the time being - probably buy a different one at some point and see what that does.

 

oh and yes it was nice to have someone who knew a bit with me when we were looking around under the dash - it's a little mystery revealed to be very simple wiring so i do feel like i know the car a bit better now

[Mr2Caps]

I think these electrical gremlins might be spreading, took my Mk2 out yesterday, indicators decided they didn't want to work, (was early in the morning so I know the feeling!), if you tried to use them the rev counter and the fuel guage stopped working! By the time I had done 25 miles I tried the indicators again and they had decided that they would quite like to participate in this day out and further more didn't mind the rev counter and fuel guage joining in! Further investigation required methinks...