I received my Kenwood head unit and Scosche harness today. All of the wires on the scosche harness have been used but I am still on the fence about the Illumination wire. The scosche harness has both the orange (illumination) and orange/white (dimmer). The Kenwood harness has only the orange/white. People have been talking about how connecting the wires improperly will try the dash lights on the HVAC cluster. I would prefer to be able to have my deck dim automatically when I put my headlights on but do not want to risk damaging the other stock illumination stuff. Is it safe to connect the "ILLUMINATION" wire on the scosche harness to the orange/white ILL wire on the Kenwood deck? I've capped off the orange/white on the scosche harness as I know dimmer does nothing for the Kenwood deck. I do not want to plug it in until I am sure. The scosche instructions say both orange AND orange/white are "illumination/dimmer" but I have read the solid orange is illumination when coming from the stock harness.

Is there any safe way to connect the illumination wires or should I just cap both off and live without a auto-dim stereo. Reading all the posts about dash/rear lights not working makes me want to just cap off the orange and orange/white wires. From what I understand, the orange wire is 12V when the lights are switched on and the orange/white is variable (dimmer).

According to the pin-out chart here the ILLUMINATION pin (#2) corresponds to a solid orange wire on my Scosche harness while the DIMMER (#12) is an orange with white stripe wire. The Kenwood only has one ILLUMINATION wire (orange with white stripe). I'd expect the solid orange (scosche) would go to the orange/white (Kenwood). I am just worried about what people are saying about how they used/did something with either the ILLUMINATION or DIMMER wires which caused their dash lights to short out/get damaged. What did they do that caused the cluster/dash lights to get fried? I want to be 100% sure before I plug anything into the car.


2nd Question: The head-unit's black (ground) wire is longer than the rest. Should I connect it to the black wire on the scosche harness or should I manually ground the long black wire from the HU to somewhere in the back of the dash?

 

1. When people install their headunits, they tend to leave the illumination wire alone. It should be taped with good, quality electrical tape if it is not connected. +12VDC is present.

2. You can either connect the BLACK wire to the BLACK wire of the harness or to the car chassis. The wire (from the harness) will do.

 

MM&Y of car would help???

The stock "illumination" leads on Honda/Acura radio harness plugs are red/black, [pos. (+)] and red, [neg. (-)].

Depending on MM&Y of car some will have just the red/black, illumination power and others will have both the red/black and the red, illumination ground from Dash Lights Brightness Controller, illumination dimming is done by running the ground through a veritable resistor to limit the amount of ground the bulb gets.

In your case your HU only has readout dimming, so connect the the HUs illumination/dimming lead to the lead in the Scosche adapter harness the connects to the red/black in the stock radio harness, or leave it disconnected altogether and depin the two illumination leads on the adapter harness 94