83 GL Auto ICE Hook Up

[RussGLAuto]

Hi all,

Some assistance required please before I go mad.

So the car has allegedly been prepped for ICE but has never had it fitted. Ever. With a just a blanking cubby storage tray in place. I found a Blauplunkt London MR21 on the Interwebs for a song which my previous GL Auto had fitted. Anyway, thought it would be simples to retrieve the car leads and hook it up.

I have located the following wires:

Front speakers - 2 brown and 2 red from coming from the back of the dash.
Rear speakers - 2 grey 1 red and 1 blue in a black sheath coming from the floor under the dash.

Power & earth leads - 1 grey with blue stripe, 1 red and 1 brown into a block and coming out as 1 black and 3 red (One red has been split into two bullet connectors).

One aerial lead.

Happy daze you might say? Except that the speaker wires have then been connected directly to the fader switch with different coloured wires next to the gear shift and terminate there. Nothing else. No terminal block or anything except for the power, earth and aerial wires.

The MR21 has balance and fade controls built in. Do I therefore make the gearshift fader redundant and send the speaker wires direct to the radio? Seems obvious I know... but that is what I'm thinking.

I'm not an electrician and don't want to short anything out....

Thanks in advance for any pointers.

Russ

[mr.brown]

Bypass the factory fader.

[mark1gls]

Make sure the car battery is disconnected, remove the negative - terminal.
The red wires might be permanent 12v supply and switched 12v, get a multi meter and check for power.
Even better if you can trace the wires back and check what and were they are connected and make sure it’s all good, the problem with old radio wiring is lots of other peoples bodges to get different radios to fit and scotch locks where common place in the late 80/90s and they are devils work.....

[RussGLAuto]

Make sure the car battery is disconnected, remove the negative - terminal.
The red wires might be permanent 12v supply and switched 12v, get a multi meter and check for power.
Even better if you can trace the wires back and check what and were they are connected and make sure it’s all good, the problem with old radio wiring is lots of other peoples bodges to get different radios to fit and scotch locks where common place in the late 80/90s and they are devils work.....

Scotch locks... I had to Google that one, thought it was a euphemism!

Bypass the factory fader - roger that Mr Brown. With you on that one. At the moment the wiring is leading to a dead end with no tunes!

I'll get the soldering iron out tomorrow and see what I can achieve

Thanks for posting.

Russ

[mark1gls]

Let us know how you get on, we are always here to help if we can, pictures are very helpful in spotting problems...

[james butler]

i personally would use a new live feed to the radio from the battery and only use an igniton live from the existing wires or tap into an igniton live in the fusebox.
then run all new speaker cables to relative speakers and leave the old stuff in there as redundant.
like others have said there`s probably been some mucking about gone on in there in the past so best left alone as much as possible.
if it can wait i will check the haynes wiring diagrams to see if your current wires tally up to anything

[OiMilkman]

i personally would use a new live feed to the radio from the battery and only use an igniton live from the existing wires or tap into an igniton live in the fusebox.
then run all new speaker cables to relative speakers and leave the old stuff in there as redundant.
like others have said there`s probably been some mucking about gone on in there in the past so best left alone as much as possible.
if it can wait i will check the haynes wiring diagrams to see if your current wires tally up to anything

What he said. More work to start with but should stop any future faults and chasing old wiring.