Using a multimeter to test wires Stereo wire harness cut? Estimated read time: 5 minutes 45 seconds. Maybe you just bought a used car and it’s got a nice discount because there’s a big old whole in the dash where your stereo should be. Or maybe you should have taken off the detachable face off that nice aftermarket radio you had in your car because someone decided to steal it from your car last night. Whatever the case may be, you are now in the process of trying to put a new stereo in your car, but there’s no harness, it’s been cut. And the factory wiring harness is in no way close to universal.
So how do you figure out what’s what? Tools you will need: A battery popper, a multimeter, wire strippers, electrical tape, thin masking tape and a marker. What is a battery popper you ask? It’s a fancy little contraption that anyone can make using some speaker wire and any old battery that works (AA, AAA, D, 9V, whatever). You take your speaker wire and tape the negative side to the negative side of the battery. Then you take the positive side of the speaker wire and tape it to the positive side of your battery.
Ford Escape 2001 Manual
Now you have a battery popper. Using a multimeter to find constant power. What if none of the wires in the dash give you 12 volts? Then you probably have a blown fuse in the car.
If someone left bare wires in the dash and a power wire touches another wire, ground or metal in the car, the fuse for the radio and possibly other accessories in the car would blow. So, don’t despair if you have no power reading, you probably just have a blown fuse. So check your fuses if that happens, and remember that sometimes they look okay, but they’re really not. You should use your multimeter to test fuses.
Put one end to each side of the fuse and put your multimeter to the ohms position. If the fuse is good, you will get some type of reading. If you don’t get any type of reading or fluctuation, you know the fuse is bad. Separate all the wires in the dash, replace the fuse, and continue on where you left off, easy as that. Once you’ve got your constant power reading and know what wire that is and you’ve taped it off and labeled it, you can move on to finding switched 12 volt power. Do the same thing you did to find constant.
Put your negative probe of your meter to ground and the positive end probing a suspected switched power wire. Then see what happens when you turn the car’s ignition on. This wire shouldn’t read anything until you’ve turned the ignition on and it should stop reading when you turn the ignition off. When you’ve found switched 12 volt power, the meter will read 12 volts only after the ignition has been turned on. Once you’ve found this, you will know that’s your Red wire for your head unit. Tape it off and mark it with your marker so you know what it is.
During the whole process, make sure you are using your electrical tape to tape off the bare ends of the wire once you’re done testing it. We don’t want those wires touching each other and popping any fuses. To find ground, put your multimeter on the ohms setting.
Put your negative probe on the chassis for ground. Then take your power probe and probe the suspect wires for a ground. When it reads 0, or close to it, you’ve got ground. Remember to tape off the bare wire with electrical tape and mark it with your masking tape and marker so you know it’s your ground wire. Using a multimeter to find ground in your stereo wiring harness. For illumination, you will be taking the negative probe from your multimeter and putting it to ground, and your positive probe will be checking each wire. With your positive probe on a bare wire, turn the parking lights on and off.
Test each wire in this manner. If your car has an illumination wire, and you get the right wire when testing, your multimeter will read 12 volts when you’ve turned on the parking lights. If you get nothing, don’t worry about it, it just means there is no illumination or dimmer wire for the radio harness. At this point you should have mostly speaker wires left over.
With your multimeter, first measure all of them ignition on and off to make sure there is definitely no power going through those wires. Next you are going to get your speaker popper tester. Pick a wire and put the negative wire from your speaker popper tester to it.
Now, go through each leftover wire with your positive wire of your speaker popper tester. Once you get a pair of speaker wires you will hear that speaker rustling and popping. Now you will know whatever pair of wires you have in your hand is the “left front speaker wires” or “right rear speaker wires”, or whatever pair you heard. To figure out what’s positive and negative, you will really need a partner. You can do it without one, but it will be more time consuming and unless you have a good ear, might be hard to correct if you get it wrong.
So try to get someone to help you out here. While you pop the speaker, have your partner look at the speaker.
If the speaker moves outwards, you have positive and negative correct. If the speaker sucks back in and moves inwards, you have positive and negative reversed. You have to do this for each pair of speaker wires. If you get one speaker out of phase, it will make the whole system sound kind of funky and hollow and it will definitely be lacking in bass. One you determine a pair of speaker wires and you determine what’s positive and what’s negative, electrical tape off the bare wires and use your masking tape and marker to note what’s what. It’s very important that you have your phase correct! When you have a pair of speakers and you have positive and negative correct on the left side, but reversed on the right side, what happens is they put each other out of phase.
This cancels out certain frequencies (this is how noise canceling devices work). It leaves a hollow sound, and very little bass.
So take your time to get it right, it will be well worth it in the end. After identifying all of your speaker wires, it’s always a good idea to take your multimeter and measure the impedance of all of the speakers in the car.
2001 Ford Escape Problems
Assuming you aren’t dealing with a factory amplified Bose system, all of the car speakers should read around 4 ohms. This is important as aftermarket head units are only designed to power 4 ohm speakers. Once you’ve identified all of your wires and you are positive your car speakers are all 4 ohms, get to it and start wiring up your aftermarket radio. I wish I had seen this earlier today. But in fairness it was a nice trip back to being a teenager in the 80’s just ghetto twist wiring everything with tape electrical tape everywhere. In fairness we did use a multi meter to find 12volt, it was just the whole constant AND ignition 12v that threw us.
Blew a fuse, may have killed the head unit as it just constantly makes a disc seek noise now, but it does load and eject discs, no fascia lights tho.Also none of the wiring colours make any sense so it’s completely random whether or not they will be in phase. But that’s what you get for not reading guides like this.
Thanks a lot Annie!! Hi Steve, I’m not familiar with the Ford Laser, we don’t have them in the US. But it looks like the equivalent to a Ford Escort over here, which is a pretty basic system. All car harnesses will have (or should have) a constant power wire for memory (the yellow one) and a switched power wire (the red one). I’m wondering why you have to reset the radio each time, I think that’s what you mean by unplugging the speaker harness and plugging it back in. Are you certain you have 12 volt power? Just so I am clear, so I can point you in the right direction.
1) You have constant power, so the radio retains memory/clock etc. 2) you have switched power, so the radio turns off with the key and turns on with the key 3 ) but you get a turn off pop whenever you turn the car off 4) when you turn the car on, you have no sound/power until you unplug the wire harness from behind the stereo and plug it back in? Does the car have a separate amplifier powering all the speakers from the factory?
Is everything original in the car, except for the aftermarket stereo? If so, it sounds like there’s a stock premium system that is common grounded which would explain the issues you are having.
Check to see that there are separate positive and negatives for each speaker in the car at the stock radio harness. If not, there is probably a stock amp that is common grounded and needs to be bypassed. Hope that helps!
It excels time! Time for checking out Ricoh Gx200 Service Manual, as best seller book in this wolrd. Do not have it? Currently, you could download. Software Downloads Manual Downloads Troubleshooting / Failure diagnosis OS Compatibility Support Contacts Service Contacts. For GX200 users. Items 49 - 72 - ricoh gx200 manual - 159.65.15.110 - ricoh gx200 manual ricoh gx200. Ricoh gx200 service manual - getbestvouchercodes - if searched for the. Ricoh Co., Ltd. Assumes no liability for failure to record or play back images caused. Contact the nearest service center at your earliest convenience. The following two manuals are included with your GX200/GX200. 
Whether your an expert Ford Escape mobile electronics installer, Ford Escape fanatic, or a novice Ford Escape enthusiast with a 2001 Ford Escape, a car stereo wiring diagram can save yourself a lot of time. Automotive wiring in a 2001 Ford Escape vehicles are becoming increasing more difficult to identify due to the installation of more advanced factory oem electronics. One of the most time consuming tasks with installing an after market car stereo, car radio, satellite radio, xm radio, car speakers, tweeters, car subwoofer, crossovers, audio equalizer, car amplifier, mobile amp, car amplifier, mp3 player, ipod or any car audio electronics is identifying the correct color car audio wires for your 2001 Ford Escape. The Modified Life staff has taken all its Ford Escape car radio wiring diagrams, Ford Escape car audio wiring diagrams, Ford Escape car stereo wiring diagrams, Ford Escape car radio wiring schematics, Ford Escape car wiring diagrams and cataloged them online for use by our visitors for free. Our automotive wiring diagrams allow you to enjoy your new mobile electronics rather than spend countless hours trying to figure out which wires goes to which 2001 Ford Escape part or component.
Feel free to use any Ford Escape car stereo wiring diagram that is listed on Modified Life but keep in mind that all information here is provided “as is” without any warranty of any kind and most of the car audio wiring diagrams listed on our enthusiast website are submitted by the Modified Life community. Use of the Ford Escape wiring information is at your own risk. Always verify all wires, wire colors and diagrams before applying any information found here to your 2001 Ford Escape.
2001 Ford Escape Recalls
Questions If you have any questions pertaining to the audio system in the 2001 Ford Escape, please feel free to post it at the bottom of this page and either we’ll do our best to find you the information you need or hopefully someone in the Modified Life community will have the information you’re looking for. Request a Car Stereo Wiring Diagram If you can’t find a particular car audio wire diagram on Modified Life, please feel free to post a car radio wiring diagram request at the bottom of this page and we’ll do our best to find you the diagram or schematic you need for your mobile audio installation. Adding More Information If you would like to help the Modified Life community by adding any missing information or adding a new car audio wire diagram to our resource, please feel free to post it at the bottom of this page. 2001 Ford Escape Car Radio Wiring Diagram Car Radio Battery Constant 12v+ Wire: Orange/Light Green Car Radio Accessory Switched 12v+ Wire: Yellow/Black Car Radio Ground Wire: Black Car Radio Illumination Wire: N/A Car Stereo Dimmer Wire: N/A Car Stereo Antenna Trigger Wire: N/A Car Stereo Cell Phone Mute Wire: N/A Car Stereo Amp Trigger Wire: N/A Car Stereo Amplifier Location: Located on the right side of the trunk area. Car Audio Front Speakers Size: N/A Car Audio Front Speakers Location: N/A Left Front Speaker Positive Wire (+): Orange/Light Green Left Front Speaker Negative Wire (-): Light Blue/WHite Right Front Speaker Positive Wire (+): White/Light Green Right Front Speaker Negative Wire (-): Dark Green/Orange Car Audio Rear Speakers Size: N/A Car Audio Rear Speakers Location: N/A Left Rear Speaker Positive Wire (+): Tan/Yellow Left Rear Speaker Negative Wire (-): Gray/Light Blue Right Rear Speaker Positive Wire (+): Orange/Red Right Rear Speaker Negative Wire (-): Brown/Pink. ModifiedLife May 20, 2009 at 4:05 pm Danny, its fairly simple.
You take the wiring harness that comes with your aftermarket radio and the Metra amp integration harness. Match up the wire colors on the harnesses and splice them together. After doing so you plug in the aftermarket radio harness into the back of your new radio and the Metra harness into the factory plugs coming from your 2001 Ford Escape. Here is the Metra wiring harness you need: If you have never installed car audio before, we advise you to take your car to an experienced mobile audio installer. Hope this helps.