Extra Wires Radio Wiring Harness 91 Vanagon

I am trying to install a Kenwood tape cassette head and CD changer into my 91 Vanagon. I bought a wiring harness at a local car stereo place and sat down to solder it to the Kenwood plug. Everything seemed to match up except I now have two brown wires, an orange wire and a blue and white wire from the wiring harness (Volkswagen side) not going anywhere because they aren't paired up with the Kenwood wires.

I plugged it in to try it (because I was impatient cranky from fumes) and it didn't power up. I took the face off of the stereo and a red light flashes to scare away easily scared off hoodlums.

I figured out from Usenet posts:

1) The brown wires are probably ground (why are there two of them and where do they go?)

2) The orange wire is illumination for when your lights are on and are sometimes not needed (where does this get connected to?)

3) The blue and white wire is marked power antenna and since I don't have a power antenna I guess this one can go no where. There is also a blue and white Then I read about this guy that had the same problem with power until he connected the blue wire. Would I connect this to the blue and white wire that is looped and capped from the Kenwood wiring harness?

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Please advise as I need tunes to drown out the engine in order to keep what is left of my sanity.

Thanks, Rob

Hi, This info is from a Kenwood CD/radio deck going into a Golf. I bought the 3rd party wiring harness to connect the deck to the Golf. Just so we're consistent on which wiring harness we're both talking about, there are the wires coming from the deck (deck side) and wires from the

3rd party wiring harness (VW side). I'm assuming the 3rd party harness connects fine to the plugs already in your Van and so you just left with the bare wire ends on the VW side to connect to the deck side.

To confirm, unused wires from the deck side (should be already taped up or capped off): blue/white: power to optional power amplifier blue: power to power antenna brown: signal from a built in cell phone handsfree system to reduce deck volume when cell phone call comes in.

Deck side red: connect to ignition or some other power that comes on when car is on yellow: connect to always on power (keeps memory settings in deck alive)

Note, you can optionally connect the red wire from the deck to an always-on power so you can listen to the radio with the car off in typical VW fashion. Just remember to power down the deck completely, don't leave it in standby, or you'll drain your battery.

Sounds like you have extra wires on the VW side. Assuming you've connected the 3rd party harness to all the plugs already in the Van, you should be able to account for the wires in the VW side harness used for the speakers, power, and ground. Could it be the harness has capacity for the power antenna etc which aren't used?

If you have the red blinking "anti-theft" or "hey look, I'm a stereo and the face plate is hidden somewhere in the vehicle" light, then you're deck is getting power through its yellow wire. I would say you just need to provide power to the red wire on the deck side. Try temporarily connecting it to any always hot (red) wire at the fuse box and see if the deck powers up.

Good tunes,

-Tony