MX-3.com

ovendenk wrote:you splice those wires to the wires on the harness that came with the receiver. then, you connect those harnesses to the ones in the car and connect the harness that came with the receiver to the receiver. done.

if you still don't understand, please go and get it installed. no offense to you, but i'd hate to see you on here in a week saying how your car caught fire.

Your right
I guess I will just take back the harness adapters and get my $20 refund back from BestBuy

ovendenk wrote:you splice those wires to the wires on the harness that came with the receiver. then, you connect those harnesses to the ones in the car and connect the harness that came with the receiver to the receiver. done.

if you still don't understand, please go and get it installed. no offense to you, but i'd hate to see you on here in a week saying how your car caught fire.

I'm just curious

Was I doing it right?
I still dont get what you said about the last part. What would I do with the other end of the wiring harness adapter?
I know the reciever connects to the radio, obviously, but the other end of the harness?
Also, there are two of them, do I need them both?

btw, like I said, I am just curious, I am not going to try to do it anymore. Going to let a pro do it for me

you were right. just match up wire colors and you need both from best buy because you have two plugs in the car. hope this helps for the future.

Sorry for bumping this thread

Its been a long time since this, I ended up getting it professionaly installed... twice

First day I had it installed, something got disconnected
They have to splice the wires again

Now I have a new problem
Stereo wont come on
Today, I tried to see if it would work. It only worked for 3mins and now wont turn on. I disconencted and connected the "deck harness" alot and still, nothing
All wires seem to be properly connected

So anyway,
Why would I have had to buy a new Harness from Best Buy? Dosent my car already have one?


I guess I will try to take out part of my dash to check out what the problem could be
The fuse in the fuse box still looks good by the way...

i'm trying to install the stock tape deck and cd player but i'm missing a small black wire that goes to the cd player....anyone have one that i may purchase off them? or know where i can get one?


thanks!

Is it the fat black wire? The one that uses its own slot?

Just go to a car stereo place, you should be able to find one

Juans_93_MX3 wrote:Now I have a new problem
Stereo wont come on
Today, I tried to see if it would work. It only worked for 3mins and now wont turn on. I disconencted and connected the "deck harness" alot and still, nothing
All wires seem to be properly connected

So anyway,
Why would I have had to buy a new Harness from Best Buy? Dosent my car already have one?

for your current problem, check your fuses to see if it has blown.

we already went over the "best buy harness" issue. the connector/wire arrangement already in the car stock are not the same as the aftermarket connector. jvc, sony, pioneer, etc. did not get together with mazda and design their decks to be plug and play with the mazda mx-3.

every car has different wire harnesses and different shaped connectors to attach to the factory head unit. however, all the aftermarket decks share the same color pattern on their wires to make the lives of installers easier. the "best buy harness" takes the two mazda connectors and outputs the wires with the appropriate colors that match the aftermarket wires, so that you can just connect red to red, blue to blue, black to black, etc.

it is not required, but the "best buy harness" makes the job really simple for people who do not know the purpose of each and every wire coming from both mazda and aftermarket. we all know how to match colors here.

i'm glad you got it professionally installed and i hope you figure out your problems. if not, take it back to where it was installed. good luck.

How much does a professional install cost? Whoever wired mine before I bought the car did a shitty job with electrical tape and its confusing as hell to follow. Also if I fade the music to the front passenger side it doesnt play but if faded to the front drivers side, both front passenger and drivers side play.

So somehow they wired the front right and left speaker into the same space? Uggh.

Also, is there an online copy of that wiring diagram with what color wire does what? I followed the link in this thread at mx3er.com and it was broken.

breenmachine wrote:How much does a professional install cost? Whoever wired mine before I bought the car did a shitty job with electrical tape and its confusing as hell to follow. Also if I fade the music to the front passenger side it doesnt play but if faded to the front drivers side, both front passenger and drivers side play.

So somehow they wired the front right and left speaker into the same space? Uggh.

Also, is there an online copy of that wiring diagram with what color wire does what? I followed the link in this thread at mx3er.com and it was broken.

A shop here would roughly charge about $40 to install a stereo in an Mx-3. If you had a shop install your stereo, and they used electric tape instead of using wire connectors, take it back, and tell them to do it right. I only use electric tape on top of the connectors, not instead of them.


On a side note. I don't understand how you guys are having such a hard time with a stereo install. I know if your a newbie, it's confusing. But as stated, buy a wire harness(Walmart, AutoZone, etc). The wires are the same color as most stereo harness's. By memory, here's what the wire colors mean. I threw in some from the stereo's harness, which probably won't be on the wire harness you buy from the store(Blue).

ADAPTER 1:

Yellow=batt power
Red=ignition power
Black=ground
Grey(+)=front right speaker
Grey(-)=front right speaker
White(+)=front left speaker
White(-)=front left speaker
Blue=power antenna
Blue=dimmer
Orange=illumunation

ADAPTER 2:

Purple(+)=rear right speaker
Purple(-)=rear right speaker
Green(+)=rear left speaker
Green(-)=rear left speaker

Thanks for that wire color info. I realize this is dirt simple but I don't want to have to go out and buy one of those adapters when I don't have to because everything is wired and working fine except the fact its done with tape which is easily fixable and the fact the passenger side front and drivers side front are both wired to the same channel and the channel where the passenger side front should be has nothing

All the colors are obviously mismatched but its easy to figure out how it works and surprise surprise, I might be wrong on the colors but I think it was 2 whites coming from the car were connected to eachother and joined at one wire which goes into the stereo.. I think thats my problem..

I replaced my unit myself. I found the best tricks were to cut the wires to about 2-3" long on the harness and radio plugs, then I soldered each connection and wrapped in e-tape, then I put it all into the dash. If you don't shorten the harness wires you end up feeding tons of wire into sometimes a very small area of your dash.

The only thing I didn't solder was the ground wire due to not being able to take it out of the car.

It took me about an hour to solder all the connectors properly and about 30min to install the deck in the car properly, but no worries about loose connections or other issues.

James "RoundTop" Magnan

Thanks for that soldering idea, I can't believe I didn't think of it. I just ran an extension cable with my iron and soldered right in the car without removing the deck. To find out what wires go to what speakers I would just play music and fade the sound to a certain speaker and connect the wires until I got the right one.

Worked out great, thanks for the help.

I'd say if you don't understand get someone to do it for you. If you paysomeone that knows what they are doing you may save yourself alot in the long run if something goes wrong and catches on fire or something like that. You don't want to fry your new deck.

u can easily burn the cd player if u plug it wrong side or way, somehting like that
id be safe and bring it to someone that knows exactly wut their doing...
good luck