Radio wiring help

Back in the day red = batt and yellow = switched was the standard. It makes sense. I was helping my daughter put a new head unit in her truck last Sunday, and the Schose wiring adapter said the colors were per some intl standard. Without looking at the instructions I said “ red is hot and yellow is ignition.” She says “ no they’re not…”. Shows what I know.

Radio wiring for older vehicles can be something of a mystery, especially if someone else has “had a go” at it. You find a whole bunch of random wires twisted together and then wrapped in Sellotape. I know of one person with a 1970s Australian import of a US car and decided to change the radio. They decided to dismantle the dashboard, and managed to never get any of the gauges to read correctly, if at all, afterwards. My first attempt to install a radio in my 1959 Ford was also somewhat ignominious. Car was +Ve earth, radio was -Ve earth - you can already sense that this did not end well. It was only a few miles before something rubbed against something else, and acrid smoke started bellowing from under the dashboard. Pretty quickly converted the car to -Ve earth after that incident.

Circa 1956 My employer provided cars for business and was liberal as to their personal use. Base cars. Heater only, no radio or anything else. some of us figured out ways to get tunes in the cars, other than the then popular little transistor radios. The cars were 12v -neg ground. Junk yard radios usually 6 v - ground. A couple of methods acomodated those. 6V - ground larger issue. One workmate managed it. Ayyavched the radio under the dash as most did. but, on insulated hangers. Reversed the + and - wires from the car and SOG, it worked…

Carl

Greg,
Did you ever get your radio to work? Also is this a factory or aftermarket radio? I’m lazy I haven’t read all of the posts.

me

Yep, works great! It’s an aftermarket JVC.

I ended up cutting the mounts off the original radio cage, and JB welded them to my new radio cage. That way, slide in new radio cage and four screws secure it, simple.

Also had to splice all the wires from original connector to jvc connecter, easy but time consuming.

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