I am having troubles getting any cd player to work in my car. I originally had an Alpine cda-9807, but since it was stolen things just aren't going well. I am starting to think my factory harness was broken in some way when the cd player was stolen. I have seen thse smart harnesses that Circuit City and such sells where both ends are already there and all you have to do is connect it. Has anyone used these before and know how well they work or does anyone have any advice on maybe getting things to work? Also, I thought all of the Alpine harnesses had an inline fuse for the power lead and included long wire leads, but the harness I currently have for the Alpine has none of these. The new deck is a cda-9830. Please help me as much as you can.

 

Um, yeah... Just get a plain old wiring harness for your car, and match up the colors on that harness to the new deck's harnes... Plug it in and rock and roll....

 

The smart harness I used with my Alpine was pretty much plug and play. Since my OEM wiring harness was all butchered up from a previous install, I ended up just cutting it off and hard wiring the Alpine harness directly to the car. If you do something like this, just make sure you connect all the wires properly. I would also recommend soldering all your connections, so you never have to worry about wires coming loose later on.

Good luck!!

 

Anyone else have any information on this? The harness I am talking about comes with both the factory end and Alpine end already on and it's a single plug with no soldering. Also, still wondering about the original Alpine harness itself.

 

bump for some knowledge

 

Every smart harness I've seen was the same white molex-type plug on each end. I thought that Circuit City bought different decks than the general populous with their plug in them, so unless you bought your deck from Circuit City, their smart harness isn't going to fit.... That's why I suggested that you just buy a regular deck harness and connect it. It's not that hard.

 

I know it's not that hard. I did my original install, but now the dillema is the HU harness that I received from the guy has very short lead wires to everything which isn't working out so well with the ground wire. Circuit City does carry the smart harness for many head units though from what I saw online.

 

bump

 

Not to be a dink or anything, but if you just extended the wires and got a regular harness, you'd have the thing installed by now.... :shrugs:

 

yeah, no ****. My point of this thread though is to find out about the smart harness (which does come with a factory end and an Alpine end) and to find out if all of the original Alpine harnesses come with an inline fuse in the power lead. I bought my cd player from a fellow eBayer in good standing and he claims that it is the factory harness, but I know my original harness before it was stolen had an inline fuse and longer leads. I'm not an idiot at this stuff so it's very obvious to me that I could do that. I am wanting other questions answered though.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by White93Civic &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">yeah, no ****. My point of this thread though is to find out about the smart harness (which does come with a factory end and an Alpine end) and to find out if all of the original Alpine harnesses come with an inline fuse in the power lead. I bought my cd player from a fellow eBayer in good standing and he claims that it is the factory harness, but I know my original harness before it was stolen had an inline fuse and longer leads. I'm not an idiot at this stuff so it's very obvious to me that I could do that. I am wanting other questions answered though.</TD></TR></TABLE>If the "smart harness" is the right one for the HU and the car, get it, it will save you time, and be a lot cleaner then making connections, and yes Alpine harnesses all came with a choke/fuseholder and about 12" of power and ground, and no less then 6" of speaker, power ant.and amp, turn on leads, mute and illum.leads, [if aval. on unit] also check both the fuse in the incar and the engine bay fuse boxs. 94

 

Thanks for the good reply man. Is there anything you can think of off the top of your head as to why the cd player wouldn't power up? This is all after my original Alpine was stolen and it has done the same thing with two Alpine cd players that were guaranteed to work.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by White93Civic &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Thanks for the good reply man. Is there anything you can think of off the top of your head as to why the cd player wouldn't power up? This is all after my original Alpine was stolen and it has done the same thing with two Alpine cd players that were guaranteed to work.</TD></TR></TABLE><TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by fcm &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> also check both the fuse in the incar and the engine bay fuse boxs. 94 </TD></TR></TABLE>

I read it, did you? Check your fuses. Sounds like either the fuse is blown or your power connection to the factory harness is bad, time to rewire. Check fuses first. That "smart harness" that you are talking about sounds like someone did some prewiring from a factory female harness to the alpine harness, that's all. Nothing special sounding to it and you will still have the same problem if your origanal factory harness is not getting power anyway.

 

All fuses have been checked and they are in good working order. I'm gonna look into the Alpine harness though. Every person's input I've had now says that all Alpine harnesses have an inline fuse in the power lead. If anyone else can claim this fact, the more proof the better.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by White93Civic &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">All fuses have been checked and they are in good working order. I'm gonna look into the Alpine harness though. Every person's input I've had now says that all Alpine harnesses have an inline fuse in the power lead. If anyone else can claim this fact, the more proof the better.</TD></TR></TABLE> Ok if the fuses are good, and as I said the Alpine harness has a choke w/ fuse holder in the yellow constant power wire. You will need a multimeter or testlight to test for power and ground, plug the "smart harness" into the cars OEM radio plug and check to see if you have power on the yellow, [constant] and the red, [acc. , ign. must be on] and check for ground on the black wire. not to sure what the OEM colors are on a 93 civic, but should be, white/yellow or blue constant, yellow/red acc., black ground. Check the wires at the OEM plug and at the Alpine plug, have run into more then one defective adpt. harness. 94

 

what color is the plug on the alpine side?i work at circuit city, the alpine cda-9813-and 9815 takes a differnt alpine harness. It uses the Metra AL1680-2x, or something like that, the other models just use the normal Metra AL1680.

 

well crap, now the hard part is gonna be getting hold of a voltmeter. Will a cheap testlight give me enough information to let me know if it's working, whereas the voltmeter would give me an actual number?

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by White93Civic &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">well crap, now the hard part is gonna be getting hold of a voltmeter. Will a cheap testlight give me enough information to let me know if it's working, whereas the voltmeter would give me an actual number?</TD></TR></TABLE>A test light will work fine, even a 12v lightbulb, [with wires on it] will work,when you check the ground, connect the testlight ground to a 12v+, and as STEV3-0 asked, do you have the right smart harness, check the the smart harness Alpine end to the Alpine harness you got with the HU, even if they are short you will be able to tell if all the pins are in the same place 94

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Every smart harness I've seen was the same white molex-type plug on each end. I thought that Circuit City bought different decks than the general populous with their plug in them, so unless you bought your deck from Circuit City, their smart harness isn't going to fit.... That's why I suggested that you just buy a regular deck harness and connect it. It's not that hard. </TD></TR></TABLE>

That's not quite right. Metra makes the harnesses, and has an end to fit the current model radio's plug, then the end of that "smart harness" has the white plug. You then get the harness for your car side.. this has the other half of the white plug on one end, and your car's plug on the other. Just plug everything together and you're done. It's Wal*Mart that does that special radio crap.. and IIRC it was only the pioneers that they did it with. The wires were like flipped 180 degrees.

 

I checked out the smart harnesses at Circuit City yesterday. It's exactly how you described it. You buy a cable for your car and a cable for your head unit and then those two pieces just snap together. Unfortunately, they don't carry Alpine's stuff anymore because the company is moving the sales of all Alpine stuff over to the internet site.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by White93Civic &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I checked out the smart harnesses at Circuit City yesterday. It's exactly how you described it. You buy a cable for your car and a cable for your head unit and then those two pieces just snap together. Unfortunately, they don't carry Alpine's stuff anymore because the company is moving the sales of all Alpine stuff over to the internet site.</TD></TR></TABLE> They would be adpt. harnesses not smart harness, [smart harnesses come wired, smart] adpt. harnesses you have to wire, with Metra, the one that gos into the car is a 70-xxxx and the one that gos in to HU, [OEM] is 71-xxxx, with Scosche it's xxxx for car and xxxxR for HU, [also OEM] except for on the smart harness Metra, Scosche, Best or anyone else, do NOT make harnesses for aftermarket HUs, that I know of, you will have to get the Alpine harness from Alpine, but before you do that, get the one fot the car, [you will need it anyway] that way it will be easy to check for power and ground, you can even "pop" the speakers with a batt., [1.5V or 9V] just to see if they work. 95

 

yeah, that's what I'm saying. Everything about these harnesses are already wired. there is a clip on both ends of both harnesses. You simply choose your car harness as one of the options and choose whatever aftermarket cd player you have as the other option and they clip together in the middle, so no wiring involved at all. Basically it allows you to mix and match for whatever application you need it for with no wiring of anything.