Need to install Alpine head unit, can't use wiring harness...

Hey guys,

I'm installing an aftermarket Alpine headunit into my EK1 at the moment. I can the replace the stereo itself easily enough, its just the wiring I've had trouble with. I've browsed the threads and seen none that explain how to actually use the wiring harness itself. The ones I bought are from Autobarn and are likely cheap and bad, but bear with me.

There are various wires not connected such as the power, battery wire, etc. I am unsure what needs to be connected to which wire. I have tried several combinations to no avail.

If anyone has encountered and solved a similar situation, or used the Autobarn wiring harnesses before successfully, then it would be great if you could explain it to me. As much as this is a noob question, if anyone can help me out it would be much appreciated.

Thanks guys!

The instructions that came with the unit should tell you what wire does what on the new loom, so I'll assume that it did come with one and your problem is working out what the existing wiring is.

The first thing to work out is your speaker cabling.

If you have a 12V drill, then this part is cake. Use the battery from the drill to identify which speaker cable goes to which speaker without taking them all off.

If you touch one leg of a speaker cable to negative on your battery, and brush the other against positive, the speaker will crackle.

The power cables are easy if you have a multimeter.

If you touch the common probe (usually black) on a ground point (any bare metal in the car really) and the positive probe on the wire, you should get 12V constant even with the car off if the wire is connected to the battery. If it's an accessory wire, it will only have 12V when the ignition is switched to accessory.

Now, instead of cutting the existing loom off altogether, what you might want to do is strip a 1cm section about 5cm behind the plug on each wire. Then you can strip the end of the wires on the new loom and wrap them around the appropriate wire. You don't even have to solder them if you want to be able to remove it later, just tape them up well. Solder is preferred, of course, but not necessary.

I'm not really familiar with car audio (just seen a little work done on my own work car), so I am not 100% sure what wires you are supposed to have.

If you have two speakers, then you'll have two figure 8 cables. If you have four speakers, you'll have four figure 8 cables. If you're not sure what a figure 8 cable is, it's a two-wire cable that looks like the number 8 when cut and looked at from the end.

Then you'll have a ground cable, probably black?

Then you'll have either a permanent 12V or accessory 12V wire, possibly red?

That's really all you need to get the thing working. Power, ground and speaker outputs. Anything else is probably unnecessary.

If you don't have a multimeter then you're going to find it very difficult to work out which wire is which. If that's the case, then you might be better off just coughing up the 30 bucks or whatever it is to have it installed, or find a friend with the right gear to do the job.

^ thats a lot of complex stuff to do.

What i did in 5min (i also have EK1, with a Alpine unit)

Plug the wiring coming form the car (which used to plug into the stock unit) into the harnesses i got off Ebay (the autobarn ones are overpriced).
The harness then plugs into the Alpine unit. ALL DONE.

So:

Car - Honda to ISO harness - ISO to Alpine harness - Head unit

(u need 2 types of wiring harnesses)

Keep in mind 96-98 and 99/00 EK's will have a different Honda to ISO harness

All done! Thanks for your help guys, I really appreciate it.