Wire a car stereo to ignition

IrishMike

Just bought a 96 A4 and the stereo and the memory wire both run to the
battery and so it cant be turned off unless you remove the faceplate
i have wired a few stereos b4 but i dont know what part of the fusebox i
should run the wire to
i searched on google but couldnt seem to find anything
anyone help me out here ?
thanks

murphaph

I used to have the Haynes for that car (well, a passat but it's the same) but sold it on with the car so I can't check it now. You will find the wire quickly enough using the Haynes wiring diagrams and you can get your local library to order the manual if they don't have it on the shelves, photocopy the relevant pages and you're in business.

That's a popular enough car though so a large library may well have the Haynes (either A4 or Passat will be fine and most VWs adhere strictly to the same colour codes for wiring and so the A3/Golf/Bora/Octavia one might be fine too!).

IrishMike

i had a look at the wiring myself
there is no wire running from the ignition to the stereo
its an aftermarket sony stereo so the guy wired it himself
the yellow and red power wires are both running to the battery for some
unknown reason so ill have to run a wire to the fusebox
car manual wont show me how to do that im afraid

louie

You can pick up an ignition wire in the fuse box or from the cigarete lighter.

Tipsy Mac

This happens with all VAG cars, the original owner must have thought when he hooked up the radio first and it was losing the channels when ignition off that the only way around was to direct wire it to the battery. This is not the case, the red to yellow wires from the sterio have splitters on them connecting into the the same red and yellow wires, there should be connectors on these that you can open and if you wire them both red to yellow it will store the stations fine and when you switch off the ignition the radio will switch off and the channels will remain memorised.

murphaph

IrishMike wrote:

i had a look at the wiring myself
there is no wire running from the ignition to the stereo
its an aftermarket sony stereo so the guy wired it himself
the yellow and red power wires are both running to the battery for some
unknown reason so ill have to run a wire to the fusebox
car manual wont show me how to do that im afraid

Sure it will but if you're not convinced, buy a cheap voltage tester (the brass kind with a bulb and a needle point, connected to a wire with a crocodile clip) and clamp the crocodile clip to something metal under the dash, something bolted to the chassis (but not something painted) and stick the needle into the wires at the fusebox under the dash with the ignition off, and then on. When the bulb goes from off to on-you've found a switched live from the ignition. If you have a multimeter you can double check you've found 12V.