Stereo Wiring?

Can you list all the colour wires you have coming out?

Most commonly you should have something like

12v - yellow? 12v switched - red? 0v - black? 4 or 8 paired speaker wires depending on number of speakers

Possible others Electric aerial Lights 12v

I came across exactly the same problem with a metro a couple of years ago, although I can't remember where the wires went now.

I found the +12v constant, +12v switched and ground by experimenting with a voltmeter. from there, the remaining wires were the speakers. With a bit of trial and error you should be able to find out which wires go to which speakers. If you get a battery and connect the speaker wires to the terminals, you should hear a 'pop' from the speaker to which it leads.

Ok, I just checked, there are:

1 each - red, black, green and purple 2 each - orange and yellow

I don't have a voltmeter... When I was getting the wires out 2 of them must have touched and sparked, and I saw a small puff of smoke (think they were touching against the dash), should that have happened? Made me a little nervous about faffing about when I don't know what I'm doing (ok, so I'm a wuss...)

Then you're screwed.

No.

In that case, PAY SOMEONE. At most it'll set you back £20-£30. Get it wrong and you can set the car on fire.

Great... was hoping to do it myself, I did on the old car but those wires were labelled.

At the very least, disconnect the battery when you're mucking about with bare wires...

Get yourself down to Maplin, then. They have perfectly serviceable ones starting at 6 quid. Or check out Ebay.

Bit hard to find the live then.

Yep. But if you haven't got the knack of keeping bare wire ends away from each other and every other bit of metal, pay someone to do it instead.

You won't risk

-blowing a fuse (also makes it hard to find the live)

-setting fire to the car (gets rid of the live)

-blowing the amplifier chip by shorting the speaker wires (scraps the radio)

So all in all, better to get an auto sparky to do it.