1982 300D Stereo Wiring Question

[dailydriver]

Hi guys

I am a newbie to the forum.

I recently purchased a 1982 300D TD and am slowly fixing some things on it. One irritant is the stereo that came with. It is a Sony CD player. Everything is fine except for the fact that it doesnt retain the memory presets on the radio when i completely switch off the ignition. i have been told that i should connect one of the power wires from the stereo to the always hot wire from the car.....but what does it mean ? here is what i have;

I have pulled the stero and am looking at the wiring.....there is a yellow and a red wire coming out from the back of the stereo and is coupled to the red (hot) wire from the car. According to the stereo's connection manual, the yellow and the red wires are indeed meant to connect with the positive (hot) wire in the car. i have checked with a tester that the red wire from the car is alive only when i turn the key in the ignition one click to the right.

The other wire coming from the back of the stereo is black and that one is connected to the brown (ground ?) wire of the car.

so can you guys pleas give me any suggestions about how and where to connect the yellow and red wires from my stereo so that i dont have to set the time and memory presets every time i switch off my car.

thanks

[arew264]

I'm currently installing a Sony CD Player as well, and while I can't tell you which wire goes where on your particular radio, I can tell you the color codes of the original wiring.
Brown - Ground
Black with Yellow - Ignition (turns on with car)
Grey with Violet - Illumination (makes the radio glow when you turn on the headlights)
Red - Battery (constant power)


On my unit, the red original wire connects with the yellow wire on the Sony harness, and the black wire with the yellow (I assume its black with a yellow stripe) connects with the red wire from the Sony harness.

Hope this helps.

[dailydriver]

arew264

thanks for your reply.

i ended up connecting the yellow wire from the sony to a spliced wire from the hazard light switch i.e. constant 12v. it resolved the memory preset problem but now when i switch off the car the stereo beeps three times. i thought i had messed up something with the wiring until i read in the stereo manual that the sound is just a reminder to remove the faceplate from the stereo before i leave the car.

i can live with that beeping message.

good luck with your project

daildriver

[arew264]

I just got mine in tonight. It went in quite nicely. Took a while to get all the speaker wires right, but it was well worth it.
This is a very nice radio. The sound quality is still kind of tinny, but I can deal with bad speakers. I'm not overly critical about that.
For me at least, the one thing to be careful of is not cranking the volume too high or I'll blow the speakers .
Oh, btw, I also have the three beeps/chirps. Apparently Sony is under the impression that you'll remove the faceplate every time you stop the car. Ick.

[rev_jeff_hayes]

Hello,

Just finished installing a new stereo into my 1982 300D. Took me the longest to find the factory constant power lead. After reading the Chilton wiring diagram for 1981 300D, identifed the female jack with red and gray/purple leads as feeding off (red) fuse #2, which has a bunch of constant power users (e.g., glove compartment light) and (gray/purple) the light switch. I connected my yellow lead from the radio to the red wire, after clipping it from the jack. Like the hazard switch, that gives fuse protection. This freed me from putting in a wire directly to the battery and installing a fuse in the wire. This is just for future readers: the factory 300D has a jack in place for constant power.

[Dominicanvirus]

Originally Posted by arew264

Black with Yellow - Ignition (turns on with car)

Took me two hrs to figure that out, mine was masked by a red wire that i thought was the battery line, i found the black and yellow after i started to dig deep. But at least I got music now! Thanks for the info.