1981 Vangon Radio Previous Owner Carnage. Help!

[Claydogh]

Hey folks! This week my van passed inspection! Thats the first time in over 10 years (that I know of!) and I am so pleased to bring an old van back into the world.

Now I'm having "fun" and repairing that huge list of "little problems" and "gremlins". I needed a break from underbody work so I found an old little 411 radio at the junkyard and figured i'd try to install it. For the first time I took a look at this rats nest, a vanagon common occurrence I am finding.

So it is a 1981 AC Vanagon, and even looking through the Bently all the wires are different, and in the other manual it Doesn't really have anything about the radio at all.

Can anyone use their infinite wisdom to help me decipher this? Appreciate any help you can give!

[ALIKA T3]

It's very simple, you just gotta follow basics and logic.
It's my favorite job for customers to fix rats nests.
I just swapped a 1985 manual transmission wiring harness into a 1982 automatic aircooled last week.
The blue wires and that brown wire in you hand are not factory, you'll have to trace them to see if they are connected to factory speaker wires or what,
but best is to start from the doors for that, then see what's left .
The cigarette lighter power (red) and ground (light brown) are daisy chained off the radio, so go back upstream from the cigarette lighter wire and follow them towards the fuse panel to find where the butchery happened. The cigarette lighters are rarely tampered with.
Some speaker wires are brown with a white tracer, that's not to be confused with chassis ground for the radio power. (red wire and brown wire)
As for the speakers, open the glove box or take it out, check the right door, you'll find the speaker wires coming out of it, see the original colors, follow them toward the radio to see if/where they have been cut/modified.
Same with driver door.
_________________
Silicone Steering Boots and 930 Cv boots for sale in the classifieds.
Syncro transmission upgrade parts in the Classifieds.
Subaru EJ22+UN1 5 speed transmission
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=416343
Syncro http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4...num+gadget

[Mateo83]

As long as you can find the 12v constant power and pull acc from the ignition. I pulled new wires for the new speakers and back up camera
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83 Air-cooled 2.0 Tin Top

[djkeev]

Brown is ground
Usually red is +12v ALWAYS HOT not ignition controlled.
The other colors? The blues, greens, purples are speakers. Each speaker is color coded. Usually a pair has the same colors but one has a stripe on it.

Being so old, there probably isn't an electric antennae wire or a switched 12 volt.

At least the PO left them long!
Mine were cut to an inch of their life!

Quite easy actually........
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Stop Dead Photo Links how to post photos

Ghia
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=392473

Vanagon
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6315537#6315537

Beetle
https://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=482968&highlight=74+super+vert

[Pchill2]

The factory connector can be purchased new with pins. I purchased one from here:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/303595280111

Crutchfield also sells adapter harness from the OEM plug to an aftermarket head unit so you don't have to splice everything like the PO did.
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87 Syncro Westy
Honda K24 swap

[ALIKA T3]

[Honuak]

Excellent opprotunity to get a multimeter if you dont already have one. You can trace and isolate every wire, find your grounds and hot leads. 12V DC isnt to tough usually.

[borninabus]

[wbailey2112]

I'll post this once again. The search function would have found this for you.


taken from www.Vanagonauts.com

86 - 91 stereo wiring

stereo wiring colors
Year(s): 1986 - 1991
Model/Type: Vanagon

Power leads
Constant 12V+ -------- Red/White
Switched 12V+ -------- n/a
Ground ------------------ Brown
Illumination ------------ Gray/Blue
Dimmer ----------------- n/a

Front Speakers
Left Front (+) ----------- White/Black
Left Front (-) ------------ Brown/White
Right Front (+) --------- Green/Black
Right Front (-) ---------- Brown
Rear Speakers
Left Rear (+) ------------ White/Black
Left Rear (-) ------------- Brown/Black
Right Rear (+) ---------- Green/Black
Right Rear (-)------------ Brown

80 - 85 Vanagon

Red - Power (fuse 9)
Brown - Ground
Blue/Grey - Illumination. There are two wires, the wires are pigtailed at the radio (wire comes from behind the driver console, connects to the radio, then goes onto the illumination light for the 12v accessory/cigarette lighter)

Red/Brown - Right front speaker (+)
Brown - Right front speaker (-)
Red/Brown - Left front speaker (+)
Brown - Left front speaker (-)
Note: the wires for the left and right front speakers are bonded together similar to home stereo wiring

Blue - Left rear speaker (+)
Red - Right rear speaker (+)
Grey - Left and Right rear speaker (-)
Note: the rear speaker harness contains only 3 wires - shared left and right rear speaker (-)
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'74 Thing
'83 Westfalia

[ALIKA T3]

For posterity the factory connector for a 1985 stereo, and possibly since production and up to 85 is 171035447B

_________________
Silicone Steering Boots and 930 Cv boots for sale in the classifieds.
Syncro transmission upgrade parts in the Classifieds.
Subaru EJ22+UN1 5 speed transmission
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=416343
Syncro http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4...num+gadget