Ok, im trying to unfuck this mess of wiring i discovered behind my head unit. This is the only thing i have found on my car that HAS been molested, and im desperately trying to restore its virginity. I need a wiring diagram that shows real life pictures (if possible) of how everything behind the stereo should be wired, including the cigarette lighter. I have the factory service manual on a PDF file but it's not helping any. As im trying to undo this mess, and taking wires apart that don't belong together, and it's causing things to not work. For ex: a blue signal wire was tapped into the power to the head unit with a horrible solder job, and when i took it out in an attempt to clean it up, and now my cluster won't light up. WTF. Anyone have anything that could help? I've tried searching and all i come up with is the same service manual i already have. I'll try and post some pics of a few wires that were just cut and left for dead. Thanks to anyone who can post useful info!

 

In this one, it seems like the wores i have seperated off to the right went to its own plug or something and it was just cut, and then the 3 wires on the bottom are what went to my cigarette lighter (minus the black and white wire, that was for my water temp meter)..


The same wires again..

 

Best bet is just learn how to read the circuit diagrams...it will help out alot in the long run. GL

 

yeah, unfortunately, the wiring diagram is gonna be your best bet.
google for the radio install, it should break down a list of what wires are actually supposed to go to the radio, that will help sort out what is for speakers and what is for the power antenna and crap like that.
From there, break out the wiring diagram and start labeling each wire as soon as you find its color. The wiring diagram will have the plugs that go to the different places, like the cig lighter and head unit and all that.
it is tedious but thats really the only way to figure out what was cut from where and attempt to get it back to stock.

I never will get why radio install places have to jack stuff up so bad. all of the info they need is on the internet to do a clean, simple job. Don't get why they waste their time guessing and hacking up the wires the way they do.



The other option is to always just yank the dash out and replace that whole harness.
I'm sure someone that always has parts cars floating around, like z28ricer, should have the harness you would need.

 

Yeah that's what im thinking. Problem is, there are many different wires coming from the harness loom that have no home, and are the same color code. Like their meant to be mated, but they come from the same source, and there's nothing for them to go to outside of it. If that makes any sense?

 

yeah, i get what you're saying.

you 100% sure they are the same? they could look the same, but one could have those little silver marks on it, so double check that.

If it was my project, I'd start with the radio, and get those labeled and off to the side.
Then try to hit up the wiring diagram the best I could and get what I could labeled and off to the side.
Then, take the wires that I couldn't figure out and come up with a list of possibilities and try to eliminate it from there.
It is very possible that they cut a wire in half that they shouldn't have and that's why they had to ghetto rig things like the dash lights... so if the diagram says red with a blue stripe goes to the dash lights and something dumb like the headlight fluid, then you know that it doesn't make a stop to anything that would be where the radio is, so you could safely assume that those two wires were supposed to be connected as one wire. See what I'm saying?
That will also let you break out the multi meter to see what has power and what doesn't. That could help you figure out if the two wires were supposed to go together or not, or if one was supposed to go to something that had 12volts all of the time and the other goes to something that needs a switched 12volts. Make sense?

Start with getting what you know/can figure out labeled and out of the way, it'll make the project seem much smaller.

 

I'll try it out. Theres a junkyard with a stock zenki up here. I'll see if i can't take a look at the harness first before i start tearing into mine more. Maybe if it's good i can just cut it in half at the thick of the loom before it seperates, and solder it onto mine at the same spot and heat shrink it, rather than tearing out the whole dash. This type of thing just pisses me off though. Unnecessary hacking of random wires and leaving them there with no lableing or home.

 

if you can get a good harness, it might be worth pulling the dash.
you can pull the dash, replace the harness, detail/clean everything, and replace the dash within a weekend. and you know everything would be good to go.

 

You need a kouki harness if you're going to do that. Zenki's are completely different.

 

Seriously? i thought they were pretty much the same other than the windsheild wiper plug and little things like that..