i installed a kenwood reciever and pioneer speakers a while ago. i did a custom wiring cuz i dint wanna bother reading the manual. now my problem is that i dont kno which is the power wire to connect to the reciever. i found 1 wire but it only allows power to the reciever wen the headlights were turned on. i assume that the wire i tried was the light on the bose set up. anyone knows wat i should do? also the antenna doesnt work and i asked my brothers friend and he said that its probably cuz i have to install a new power wire to antenna. any info would be great. p.s. i tried reading the haynes manual. the diagrams are too complicated lol

i also heard that theres a 3rd gen wiring expert on the .org anyone kno who he is and if he can solve my problem

 

The word on the street is right! That expert is Craig B.

If you "custom-wired" it (whatever that means), I'd think you would know what each color wire is. The power is red, BTW. The one you are talking about (to illuminate it when the lights are turned on), is that orange/white (or sometimes just orange) wire.

And no, your bro's friend is not exactly right. If after hacking all the wires, you matched the colors/connections right and the antenna still doesn't work, that's because it is broken. Does it pull all the way out when you pull at it while the stereo is off? If so, it is definitely broken. Very common problem on our Maxes. Buy an antenna mast from eBay...it is usually around $18 or so. BTW, IIRC, the antenna wire is blue/white, but I could be wrong on that.

 

thx, i have all the speaker wires hooked up and everything but theres quite a few wires from the bose system(not the speaker ones). there are 2 wires i think that have red on it. i believe both of them have stripes. i dont think i saw a plain red wire there but i could be wrong.

my antenna is new so i doubt its broken (hopefully not broken). wen you say antenna wire, do you mean the wire that tells the antenna to go up?

anyone else kno wat i can do? hmm maybe i should pm craig b first.

 

you shoulda bought the harness. makes it much safer, easier, and faster.

now that you've hacked the harness to bits, you'll need this:
http://www.mattblehm.com/faq/wiring_info/radio_info/

 

thanks but Matt actually knows tons more than me when it comes to audio stuff (and pretty much everything else on these cars)

like Matt said, the radio install harness are definitely the way to go - they're only $10 or so on ebay all the time
you should be able to figure it out with Matt's wiring info on his site and a multimeter

antenna could be not working now since it might be wired wrong - signal not getting to antenna unit to make it go up

 

I had the same problem. What you need to do, if you have the bose system, is connect your amp turn on wire to you power antenna wire. That will send the signal for both of them too turn on.

 

yea i would have used the harness but i put on 16 gauge wires for sound quality and wat not.

 

good intentions....but you could have accomplished that by using a harness and just leaving out the four speaker wires (grey, grey/black, and green, green/black), using the heavier gauge wire instead.

 

o ic. o well, thx for all your input in this matter up until now. how does the wiriing for the antenna go and through wat routes are they going cuz i tried again and rewired the antenna signal but the antenna still didnt work. i really hope that my antenna dint break and i did try to pull it but it was in there pretty good.

 

that's the part that the harness you should have bought makes it 100x easier. they're all properly labelled and coded for it. I also gave you the link above for the wiring harness colors. look at that, and that will tell you where the wires need to go. If you can't figure it out from there, then I highly suggest taking it to a shop and let them clean it up for you.

 

Matt I'm looking at that link for the 90-91 Max, as I have a 91, and It's not helping much for the power antenna, I got a whole new antenna kit on ebay and for installation I have to splice new wires, but your link after power antenna its blank...