97 gt stereo vs stereo with sterring controls

i actually now own 2 97 grand am gt's. the first one i bought, has the steering whell controls. unfortunately, that car has been a pos since i bought it, so like any intelligent person, i went and bought another one.... this one doesnt have the steering controls, and came with a really crappy aftermarket head unit with analog radio controls and the cd player doesnt work. so i figured id take the cd player out of the original and put it the "new" one.
when i removed the after market unit, i find that they had done what i was praying they hadnt, and chopped the harness and hard wired it in. after undoing all that, i find that not all the wires match between the player from 1 gt to another and naturally, the one with steering controls has extra wires.

ive already looked at the 12volt website, but that only shows 1 stereo, which i believe is the one without the controls. doesnt anyone know where i can find both diagrams so i can compare them?

ive tried just matching colors, but that was a no go.....

Your best bet is a GM shop manual, your local library carrys most of these and I know you can find them used on ebay for realy cheap!

You did pull the wire harness from the steering wheel to the radio, you'll need all that for it to work.

Other wise the color of wires should be close to the same, power, speakers, etc, except the extra control wires.

i ended up using an aftermarket, but that still took me a while. in the end, i think my constant volt wire, the orange one, has an open somewhere. i got the aftermarket to work, but it has no memory. everytime i turn the car off i lose the saved stations.... only way i could get it to work at all was to splice both the constant and the switched from the unit into the switched from the dash...

thanks for trying to help, ill see if i can live with this setup for a bit before i rip it back out and mess with it some more...

Start by checking the fuses, the B+ and ACC wires have different fuses. I absolutely hate working on stereos and security systems, because anyone with two hands, a pair of lineman's pliars, and some electrical- or duct-tape thinks they can install these things. Like yours being hard wired, or mine being twisted and taped (no solder) :banghead:

I wish you luck fixing this mess!

ya, its been a monsterous pia. got it fixed today though. ended up having to run another fused wire from the battery. got it to work without being always on and keeps the memory....