Hello all. I am tying to put this car back together. Unfortunately , this car was molested by one or several people through its years and the last guy to take it apart is no longer around.

Right now I am trying to make sense of all the connectors behind the dash. I am stuck on this connector at the moment.




I do have other questions but I do not want to overwhelm this thread.

If you can help me identify what this connector goes to, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you in advance.

 

Looks like a rear speaker lead for the radio.

 

That is already leading into my next question.

There was an aftermarket radio in the car. They ran a power and a ground that they installed off of the ignition wire. I found one yellow wire that is for the radio, but that is it.

I have an AM radio and an 8 track player that I am trying to install. I'm told that they are correct, but I can't figure out how to wire them.

If the connector with the green/white and black wire are indeed for the speakers, I can't see where they would connect to the radio at.

 

The connector in question is for the seatbelt warning buzzer that would be mounted behind the dash. The only wire related to the radio in the dash harness is the yellow power wire. The speaker harness and 8 track harnesses are seperate from the dash harness.
The seatbelt buzzer looks like this:

If it is not still bolted behind the dash, it was likely removed by a previous owner because of the annoying sound it makes.

 

The factory front speaker harness looks something like this:

The 3-pin connector plugs into the radio and the yellow wire plugs into the 3-pin connector. A factory harness would be soldered directly to the speaker terminals instead of having the 2-pin connector seen above. The 8-track in your photos above should also have a male 3-pin connector like the one in the above photo. To connect the 8-track, the male 3-pin connector from the 8-track plugs into the radio. Then the male 3-pin connector from the speaker plugs into the female 3-pin connector on the 8-track (still attached to your 8-track), and the yellow wire plugs into the male 3-pin speaker connector. (If that makes sense) The rear speaker (when so equipped) has a single blue wire running from that speaker up to the dash that plugs into the blue wire on the radio. Although all radios have this wire, AM and FM mono radios need a fader **** for the blue wire to do anything. You radio does not have a fader ****, and does not provide an output to the blue wire pictured. The 8-track has its own two single blue wires. One connects to the wire on the radio, the other connects to the wire running to the back speaker. Even with no signal to the blue wire from the radio, the 8-track will still give a signal while playing an 8-track tape.

 

You are a god send. Thank you so much! Do you know is that speaker harness is available to buy anywhere?

Also, the 3 pin connector on the 8 track does not fit onto the radio. Am I missing an adapter harness or something?

Thanks again. So much! Really.

 

I tried to explain in the last post, but there was a lot so it might not have been clear. The 3-pin connector on your 8-track does not plug into the radio. There should be another3-pin connector on the 8-track that has been cut off. The missing 3-pin plug goes into the radio. The speaker harness and yellow wire from the dash plug into the 3-pin connector that is currently on your 8-track.

Here is a link to a replacement harness to repair your 8-track wiring:
8-track repair harness

Here is a link to a replacement front speaker harness:
Speaker harness

You would need to cut the 2-pin connector off and solder the wires onto the speaker.

 

If it is not clear from the last post, the power wire and car speaker wires go through the 8-track to get to the radio. In other words, the connectors from the car (speaker(s) and yellow power wire) plug into the 8-track, then the 8-track plugs into the radio. So, the only wires connecting to the radio come directly from the 8-track player. When there is no tape in the 8-track player, a switch inside jumps the radio directly to the car speaker(s) and power wire. When you insert a tape, the switch inside automatically disconnect the radio from the car wiring (you will see the light in the radio go out if it was turned on), and connects the 8-track player to the speakers. As a side note, the radio does not connect to a seperate ground wire, the ground for the radio comes from the case and face when the radio is mounted to metal surfaces in the dash.

 

Thank you so much. That makes sense. I appreciate your help. And the links, cake on top. Thank you so so much.

I'm not sure if I'm going to hide a modern radio yet, but having these components work is a must for me.

Thank you!!!

 

You can add an 1/8" audio jack or bluetooth input to the factory radio very easily if you don't want to add an additional radio. I wrote up this thread a few years ago:
https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...-radio-161300/
I do this with all of the cars I restore. Currently use setups like this in my 68 Toro, 66 chevelle, and 72 holiday coupe.

 

Does this render the actual radio useless? Thank you.

The benefit to an aftermarket radio is that you can do 4 speakers etc. But I like this idea also. I'm intrigued.

Is the dashboard speaker something I can replace with something from the local store?

 

The parts I show in the thread make it so the radio works exactly as it did from the factory until you plug in the 1/8" jack. Then the audio coming from the jack takes over the amplifier in the radio and the volume **** on the radio is controlling the volume from the MP3 player. I use a cheap bluetooth to 1/8" adapters, but you can also wire in a bluetooth adapter instead. As for speakers, you need to run 10 ohm speakers so you do not overload the transistors in the factory radio. You can get reproduction 10 ohm speakers, but lately I have been adding 6 ohm 10 watt resistors in series with a newer style 4 ohm 4"x10" or 6"x9" speaker. You lose a little bit of clearity, but it still sounds good enough for me.

 

That's awesome. How did you even figure all that out? Are you an electrical engineer or something?

Are you able to provide me a basic wiring diagram to wire in the resistors? Hope I'm not overreaching here.

 

To wire a resistor to either speaker, you want to pick up some of these:

The 4 pack above will be enough for 4 speakers. Each speaker only needs 1 resistor. For the front, if you use one of the 3-pin replacement harnesses, solder the green wire to one of the speaker terminals. Then solder one end of the resistor to the other speaker terminal. Solder the black wire from the 3-pin harness to the other end of the resistor. Finally, mount the resistor somewhere out of the way. I usually drill a small hole on the speaker frame and rivet the resistor to the speaker. For a back speaker, solder one end of the resistor to one terminal of the speaker. The other end of the resistor gets connected to ground. The other speaker terminal connects to the blue wire running from the rear of the car up to the radio. Again, none of this is needed if you buy correct 10 ohm reproduction replacement speakers, but most of them run about $100 each.

 

Thank you!! I cant express my appreciation for your time and knowledge. Thank you so much!