Stereo Wiring Decoding

[cellerdoor]

I'm replacing my stereo and speakers and have all of the components out and a pile of spaghetti sticking out of the receiver hole and need some help confirming my assumptions.

The PO had put an alpine deck in probably 15 years ago (kept original speakers) and whoever installed it spliced and soldered the alpines harness wires into the westy wiring prior to the blocks, but left the blocks in place.

Luckily the alpines harness is using the standard colors so I matched up the codes to what its attached to on the westy and generated this chart:

Speaker wires are easy, but had three questions:

1. The alpines red ignition and yellow battery wires are connected to two red wires that come from each side of the westy's dash. Im guessing the alpine is splicing into a power wire that also feeds other downstream power needs (original power wires, where radio is always on battery regardless of key position). Is this correct?

2. The alpines black ground wire is connected to two brown wires, once again one from each side of the dash. I'm assuming that the alpine was splicing into a ground run that continues to other grounding needs. Is that correct?

3. The westy had two blue/white wires that terminate in the westy block together, one from each side of the dash. These are not connected to anything from the alpine harness. Not sure what their purpose was.

My plan is to cut the westy harness blocks and wires off where the old alpine's wires are currently spliced into them, then butt splice the westy's wiring directly to my new pioneer deck's harness wires (per the chart).

Does this seem to be the way to go? Anything about this seem drastically wrong? Any input would be appreciated.
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1986 Westy

[Dampcamper]

OK, working backwards on your list:
Blue/White is shown as the wire to the high-beam indicator in your instrument cluster (taps off the fuse for one side of your high-beams), I am not aware of any other factory uses for that color wire but then my experience is with older vans. Do you have a driving light setup that might be using this wire to power a relay?

Volkswagen uses Brown as the color for ground wires. Some after-market electronics use Black as the color for ground wire. '86 has a couple of different wiring schemes where the radio is tapped from a circuit that feeds interior lights (from fuse S-3). Are the "taps" at factory connectors? If so you should be good to go.
Fuse S-3 is fed from the "30" wire, unswitched battery power, always on.
On my radio, the YW wire was battery and the RD wire was switched to power the radio on and off. I added a "Radio" dash switch to allow radio operation without ignition being on. I also power the radio off of the AUX battery now so I don't run the cranking battery flat.
If you go getting creative on your power wiring just make sure you use all fused power sources, we've seen some meltdowns caused by unfused wires grounding out: http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=580316 Note this problem was a bad install by a PO and the van has been properly repaired.

[cellerdoor]

Thanks Damp,

As far as I know (and have all the repair records) there have been no modifications to the vehicles wiring from stock except for this alpine receiver hack in. Radio will play even when the keys not in so its directly wired to the starting battery.

I haven't traced the wires back to the fuse panel yet but plan on doing so shortly to see where this red power and brown ground set up leads to. The van does have power side mirrors but crank side windows.

Still perplexed about the existing blue/white wires since they do nothing radio-wise but come into the westy radio block and leave in the same port, basically twisted together.

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1986 Westy

[JudoJeff]

My guess is external power amp.

The yellow B+ is normally key on. Red B+ is always on, no key needed.
By connecting them together, radio is always on, no key.

Tape the wires to prevent shorting them out.
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1989 Vanagon GL Westfalia Camper, Burned up on 7/31/16.
1987 Vanagon GL Westfalia Camper, Bostig & Rebuilt, sold
1986 Vanagon GL Westfalia Camper, Bostig Sold May 10, 2021
1999 Ford GTRV Westfalia camper (30% bigger Westy layout)

[LemonCove]

As I recall (don't have Bentley with me), the blue/grey (look carefully) wires are dashboard illumination. I'm guessing that the stereo is daisy chained . . . . one wire comes from some bulb on the dash harness (heater controls?), and one wire goes to the next bulb on the harness (cig lighter?).
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'88 Bostig Westy

[cellerdoor]

[shadetreetim]

[kamzcab86]

[LemonCove]

[cellerdoor]

That's clears that issue up. Thanks everybody for your help.

Makes me want to run the receiver from its own battery power feed and ground and not splice into the lines in the dash, and then jump that over to an aux battery in the future.
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1986 Westy

[shadetreetim]

[Dampcamper]

re: Blue/White wires, yeah, I had my head under the dash and as others said thereis grey/blue used for dash lamps and under there it looks like blue/white. So that is probably your dsh illumination after the dimmer. Some radios can connect to it and some (like my Pioneer) just blast you out with full intensity all the time.

I just added a FLAPS rocker switch in an unused switch position in my dash so I don't have to use the key for tunes. Radio is fed from AUX battery.