speaker wire colors at the speakers

[iowabucks]

Bought my wife a new stereo and speakers for her 05 Grand Am from Crutchfield. They are supposed to send all the wiring harnesses for the speakers. Already started tearing everything down and find out the harness for the front speakers is about 2 foot too short. Oh well, i can just solder directly to the speakers. Didn't send me any harness for the rear speakers. My question is if i just solder the wires to the speakers, how do i know which factory wires are the power, and which are ground? The colors do not match at the speaker. I seem to have current at both pins in the plugs.

The left rear is purple and white, the right rear is dark blue and light blue.

[xeroinfinity]

Welcome to AF !

Its all complicated with factory systems.

It would help to know what model stereo you have.
On some speakers on the rear and doors have 2 speakers.
A larger bass/mid then they have smaller cone tweeters off to the side.

Thiers usually a factory amp biult in too,
it should be in the trunk, on the driverside fender.
it's coverd by the trunk cover skirts.

So You're also going to need to find a manual for the 05' Grand Am, if you plan on using any of the factory wiring.

Actuallly I thought Crutchfield had wiring diagrams avialable if you bought a stereo from them, might check into that.


Good Luck

[racer77]

if you get the radio hooked up,connect one speaker,turn it on,if it sounds like $h!t then swich the wires.do that for each speaker

[Brandish]

For your fronts the factory colours are grey and tan for front-left (tan is positive), dark green and light green for front-right (light green is positive), although there will probably be a connector, as you said, about two feet above the factory speaker where the colours will change to red and black for both doors. Black is negative and red is positive, and you can either use those wires or use your own wire and go up to where the connector is. I usually just de-solder the factory wires right at the factory speaker and solder those onto the aftermarket ones. For rears, I think you may want to go in there with a trouble light and re-check your colours. Rear-left should actually be brown and yellow (brown is positive), rear-right is indeed dark blue and light blue (dark blue is positive). Try not to think of it in terms of power and ground for the speakers... The speaker's aren't actually grounded anywhere in the car; it's just positive and negative terminals. Even if you just guessed and had your positives and negatives swapped, all your speakers would still work, but they would be out of phase and you would notice the sound would be devoid of much bass response, on top of sounding "funny" in general. Good luck!

[xeroinfinity]

Brandish, yoiu sure about those colors?

That sounds the same as the 99-02,
I thought it was changed in 03-05'.