Stereo Suggestions..what do you guys use?

[peguinsexplode]

I have been creepin' around and looking at stereo's for my 88 festiva, i want a casstte or cheap CD player with a AUX coming out of the front(for my ipod). The only crappy thing is whoever had my car before me they cut the harness out, leaving just the wires, and not the clips for the stock radio(which if anyone has a stock harness they'd like to sell, let me know)so its hard to buy a radio without knowing what the possiblities are. normally im not a fan of aftermarket stuff, just want a radio that'll play my songs! Help!

[Damkid]

stereos, even without the factory wiring harness, are still pretty easy to install, my car had the harness cut before i got it, but i love aftermarket stuff so i would have had to splice in the new harness anyway

[peguinsexplode]

Which wires on the factory harness are the power and ground? that'll solve a lot for me at this point..

[Damkid]

i'd have to pull my deck out to check, if you got a tester it's easy enough to figure out, ground on mine is solid black, if your car doesn't have that you could take the ground off the deck and bolt it to the dash, either way it'd be grounded,

if you look at the wires behind each speaker and write down what color wires they are, you can use process of elimination to figure out what wires are the positive wires, there should be 2 wires, one constant power, and the other turns on and off with the key

[GenevaDirt]

sticky at beginning of this section shows the wiring......

http://www.fordfestiva.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3139

[nattyphysicist]

Re: Stereo Suggestions..what do you guys use?

I have been creepin' around and looking at stereo's for my 88 festiva, i want a casstte or cheap CD player with a AUX coming out of the front(for my ipod). The only crappy thing is whoever had my car before me they cut the harness out, leaving just the wires, and not the clips for the stock radio(which if anyone has a stock harness they'd like to sell, let me know)so its hard to buy a radio without knowing what the possiblities are. normally im not a fan of aftermarket stuff, just want a radio that'll play my songs! Help!

As long as you are willing to strip some wires and twist them together, you should be able to install any aftermarket deck that physically fits into the space. Most decks now have aux input on the front with a cd player, so finding a cheap one should be easy.

The sticky at the top of this section does not tell you the polarity of the speaker wires. This is important. To figure it out, look at the connectors to the speakers. The spades on the connector are in a T formation. The top of the T is the negative wire, or the other way around as long as you are consistent with all 4 speakers.

[peguinsexplode]

got it all hooked up, its just an am/fm radio, but it should pick up my ipod fm transmitter(hopefully, i left it in another car..dumb me)