Sorry for the ingnorance fellas, but car audio is something i'm not very knowledgeable about.....I had an aftermarket sony head unit, but I sold that and I had an harness for that installed and it's still there. Now I bought a cheapo alpine head unit, but it's nothing like the sony. That's where my ignorance shines brightest.....who has experience with installing ALPINE head units...I need help just figuring out which wires to tap....and since i have a harness....my logic tells me that i shouldn't have to buy another one for this little dilemma.....PLEASE HELP

 

Do you have the harness for the car, or the one that mated to the Sony radio? If you only have harness for the Sony, and no factory harness adaptor, then you'll have a much more difficult time. It sill won't be very difficult though.

 

I had the harness that mated with the Sony head unit. Well, I was thinking all the wires seem to be of the same color...so if I just cut off the adapter that plugged into the sony head unit...couldn't I just follow the exact lines and just connect it accordingly by color...but the difference with the Alpine unit is that it has some sort of "box thingy"...is that for the bass "thingy".....i'm at work so i don't know the exact terms...I just need a radio...I haven't had one for about half a year...and it's driving me nuts...and i'm not going to pay some The Good Guys cat to install this when I can do it myself...with some proper help from ma fellow honda-techers.....thanks again

 

That box is actually a capactor or some part of the internal power supply that would cause interferance. You're supposed to move that away from the unit and the RCAs. This is according to the manual BTW. What you should do is go to walmart and buy the harness adapter for your car. It makes it really easy to do.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 1BlackHatch &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">That box is actually a capactor or some part of the internal power supply that would cause interferance. You're supposed to move that away from the unit and the RCAs. This is according to the manual BTW. </TD></TR></TABLE>


Whoa!

I always wondered what that was. Maybe that is my intermittent noise problem. Mine little box on my 7998 is too close to my rca. Sometimes I get a scratching/popping distortion. It happens for like a millisecond and then goes away. It is reproduceable when it happens at certain parts of a song. Then the next time I drive my car it does not happens. It has been driving me nuts. I was thinking my cheap rca's could be causing it. I will try moving that box farther away from my rca's.

 

So wait the Harness for the Sony head units and Alpine head units are different?

 

Does it only happen during MP3s? Mine does the same damn thing and my guess is that it is a decoder glitch on MP3 playback.

 

Yes. They are probably have a different pinout. Do you still have the harness for the stock civic radio on the end of the wires but have the sony harness soldered on??

 

It is most common when I play mp3's. Sometimes(much rarer) it will happen on a pressed cd. I need to go to radio shack and find a rca to headphone jack converter, so I can listen to what the hu is putting out.

I have noticed that some mp3's will do it alot. I just skip them for fear of damaging my speakers. At first I thought it was clipping. But it happens if the volume is low also. I lowered the sensitivity on my amp. The popping is still there when it happens.

If I listen to mp3's for an hour this pop may happen 5-10 times.

 

See mine only does that with certain mp3s. The others play fine. But it pops LOUD. I worry about my ears mroe than my speakers!

Let me know what you find out.

 

Mamaboy,

What car do you have? You can probably get the wiring diagrams online. If you have the alpine instruction manual it should not be too difficult for you to install.

blackhatch,

The popping is loud. At least 3-6 db above the music level. It hurts like hell. I don't think it is good for my speakers either. It happens when I lower the volume also. My new mp3 cd's I have made do not seem to have the problem as much. I have some mp3 backups I made like 3 years ago that I play in the car. I have noticed that material on those cd's are more likely to have issues. Some songs I cannot listen to because it will pops so often. There are only 5 out of the 500+ mp3's I have that this applies to.

I checked the box thing. I guess I moved it at some point. It is on the drivers side. At least 3 inches from the radio and about 6 inches from the rca's. So back to the drawing board.

 

Is your factory harness intact, or is it cut with the sony harness on it? If the factory harness is gone, and you just have the sony connected to wires, I would cut off the sony harness and connect the wires to your alpine harnesses wires. Basic connections are yellow for memory, red for power, black (I think) for ground. Blue is remote, don't connect it to anything if you do not have an amp. I can't recall the color for antenna, I want to say blue also. Maybe one wire is blue and the other is blue and white.

This is all from memory. Post the model you have and I can check the manual online probably.

 

Yeah I am thinking it may be a codec compatibility issue or something. As you said most of my newer stuff doesn't do it. I'll figure it out one day...

 

the stock male socket was removed and the sony harness was just attached to the lines...the problem....I bought the harness and i need the male piece of the stock line...acura said its friggin $45 just for the pigtail.....F%!k that! ok heres the break down of the lines on the harness.

1. Black - Ground
2. Yellow - Battery/Constant
3. Orange - Illumination/Dash Light
4. Orange w/ White Stripe - Dimmer
5. White - Left Front Positive
6. White w/ Black Stripe - Left Front Negative
7. Grey - Right Front Positive
8. Grey w/ Black Stripe - Right Front Negative
9. Green - Left Rear Positive
10. Green w/ Black Stripe - Left Rear Negative
11. Purple - Right Rear Positive
12. Purple w/ Black Stripe - Right Rear Positive
13. Red - 12V+ Ignition/Switched

That's what the Harness is....what's the equivalents for this on the stock lines!

 

and this is the stock wiring right?

Main Power Wiring

Power (ignition) Yellow/Red
Power (constant) White/Blue
Power (antenna) Yellow/Green
Illumination Red/Black
Ground Solid Black

Front Speaker Wiring

Right Front (positive) Red/Green
Left Front (positive) Blue/Green
Right Front (negative) Brown/Black
Left Front (negative) Grey/Black

Rear Speaker Wiring

Right Rear (positive) Red/Yellow
Left Rear (positive) Blue/Yellow
Right Rear (negative) Brown/White
Left Rear (negative) Grey/White

 

What car?

Brown/grey speaker wires are normally negative. So that part seems good.

 

the big grey metal box is the DC to DC power converter... some of the kenwood exelons have it too. I think the grey thing he's refering to is the filter on the power lines. It's a little grey plastic box with a fuse IIRC. Most of the installs I do I don't use it and it works fine. Every now and then though you'll hit a car that gets a little engine noise, and the box helps clean it up some.

 

Ive only ever done one car that needed the 'filter'.

I chop it off so it makes the harnes to harness look clean. ( brand X stereo harness to Oem stereo plug)

If theres no, factory plug or the guys too cheap to buy the mate plug, and I gotta chop it out, I'll leave the filter on.

 

they grey plastic box takes up alot of room too, and on quite a few cars makes it a total bitch to get the radio all the way in

 

I'm planning on installing a 9813 in my car this weekend. I have one of those aftermarket harnesses. I have two pieces actually. One is from OEM harness to universal, then another one plugs into the universal one and has an Alpine end that plugs straight into the radio. No cutting required, but between the two harnesses, it added about a foot more of wires behind the radio. I kinda had trouble getting my last radio all the way in because I had so many wires back there. Between the foot long wiring harness, DC-DC converter of the Alpine and all those RCA's, it gets pretty messy back there.

 

Oh ****...new problem....hahahahaha...I got everything to work fine...I just used butt connectors and connected all the stock wires to the according wires of the Alpine wires....problem solved....but before this I was contemplating a custom install for my Profec E-01 Boost controller....so I cut the middle part that seperates the radio/tray and ashtray/lighter.....I was going to mount the monitor there...well I scratched that idea... well that would've held my aftermarket installation kit in place....NOW the friggin thing has no support....what to do...brackets? SHIOT!


Modified by mamaboy at 4:37 AM 4/12/2003