BX16V.com Forum

Can anyone give me the info on colours of wires.
I want to fit a stereo in the ol girl.

Thanks

it's not all that simple. Its not alike a british motor which would follow BS-AU7, greens can be live or neutral, ignition fed or not. Yellow is often live but sometimes not, blue is sometimes neutral but in cases it is not!

Are you using the original wiring? Because the valvers have the add on wiring for rear speakers and centre console jacks which adds even more colours and connectors into the fun.

When you remove your old unit there should be 10 wires, but a great deal depends on if the OE (French, sorry, Yugoslavian!!!) wiring has been altered over the years, and, make/type and connections, on the new unit.
…………………………..
Red or white wire, possibly with a trace colour – permanent live feed.
Yellow wire, possibly with a black trace – negative. Check with a volt meter before connecting.

Speakers Wires – 4 greens LH, and 4 browns, RH speakers
Greens and browns maybe paired off with a small wrap of insulation tape.
Dash speaker/tweeters, are linked into the door speaker circuits.

LHF
- Green with a red trace mark
Green with a black trace mark

RHF
- Brown with a red trace mark
Brown with a black trace

LHR
– Green with a red trace mark
Green with a yellow trace mark

RHR
– Brown with a red trace mark
Brown with a yellow trace mark

Coloured trace marks on the speaker wires are quite difficult to spot, have been removed, or, just in a great bundle of wires!!!!. Well worth removing the speakers grills to check for correct polarity, by using a AA/AAA 1.5 volt battery. With a pair of speaker wires, or any pair, if jumbled. Connect one wire to the negative and dab the battery positive with remainder. Speaker cone should move outwards for correct polarity.

Hope this may help.

Regards

Vanny

Why on earth did they put so many Green wires as positives in their looms, and brown’s as negatives. Just completed a mod on the overhead centre consol lighting..
Took me about a half hour to twig the wiring.
Do the French use a green wire as positive on their mains!!!!!!!!!!!??

Thanks for the info guys.
Dont think I'll get round to it till the weekend though.

Many modern replacement head units require both a permanent 12V and a switched to operate correctly - the BX only has a permanent 12V as standard, which is why you have to switch the radio off indepentantly of the ignition (unless it's already been modified!)

Assuming the wiring hasn't been bodged previously, the easiest option is to bite the bullet and cough up for the conversion leads to a modern ISO stereo. This gets around the majority of problems, but you may still need to create some connections and obtain some extra pins to insert in the ISO connectors.

When I installed mine in the 16V I quite liked a wiring challenge, so went for a fiendishly complex Blaupunkt head unit which had dimming of the display when the lights were switched on, needed both 12V connections to prevent it switching off every hour to save the battery, plus a couple of extra speakers to wire in (I disconnected the C pillar ones as they're crap anyway!) and a cable for a boot mount CD changer (gives you an idea how long ago it was - who installs CD changers these days, or for that matter a minidisc head unit!)

I identified the colour coding based on the original wiring for +ve and -ve before I removed anything.

Handy tip for you, which I was quite proud of at the time on the lateral thinking front! If you want dimming and switched 12V feed the easiest place to get both is from the multiplug on the back of the clock in the centre console - there's a different 12V feed which is live depending on whether the lights are on or not, plus the clock is only illuminated when the ignition is on, so there's your switched feed. You'll need a multimeter to check which connections to tap into, but as stated before it's best to check the factory wires anyway before you plug a new head unit in to make sure they're the right way round.

It's easy because you can get to it easily, the wiring can just drop down the back of the stereo without removing anything, the plug has plenty of space to be opened up and solder additional connections in place so long as you're reasonably neat at soldering (I'm not!) and preferably with the help of an assistant to do it all in place.

Last tip - remove the front half of the centre console completely before you even think about getting started - you have to spread the plastic quite a bit at the front end to allow it to be drawn out but it's plenty flexible enough - this gives you complete access to the wiring at the back of the stereo for routing it all, rather than trying to ram a stereo into a small hole with too much wiring in place that you can't get to to create a gap!

Any questions, just ask - I may even have some pics at home of what I did.

Adrian

Thanks for that Adrian
Yes I am fitting a minidisc player and a CD changer hahahaha.Its been lying around my shed for a few years,so I thought I'd put it in.
I also like the idea of minidiscs,I have a few and I have a minidisc in the house too.
I'm not worried about amps and Mp3 stuff,just want some music in the car.

lol - I put some decent speakers in the rear shelf - no amp - much better than any other mod just to pull the plugs on those silly little C pillar speakers!

You can definitely fit the CD changer in the boot side panel on the left - ideally need an angled drill driver or a dremel to get the holes started. I had a 10 disc unit mounted up there flush with the plastic panel so no risk of damage.

All wiring can be pulled through and taped alongside the centre tunnel, whip the back seat base out on the nearside, under the rear carpet, up the back of the seat in the crack behind the fixed part and you're in the boot

I found some old pics of the install - unfortunately not the ones of the clock wiring - click for bigger ones





Quick release block is handy when you want to stick junk in the car

When I sold the phase 2 the bloke buying it didn't want to pay for the stereo so I pulled it out complete and it's now installed in the phase 1, so the wiring can't have been hard as I did it all twice!

Quick release coupler on parcel shelf =

I did this on my Tritan 16v and it made using the boot so much easier.

I always put my CD changer under the passenger seat.

Mike P.

i put my cd changer in the shed lol!

cheated and got an Aux cable for the head unit!

when it was in the boot i have to say it performed stella service, sat infront of the 2 12" subs, never skipped once when the system was Being abused! did see a kenwood one that would play Mp3 discs too, 10 disc changer, thoguht the amount of mp3 tracks you can get on a disc, x that by 10 and you'd prolly never hear the same track twice int he course of a year hahaha!

To be honest, it all makes a lot of sence to me these days, i just pick up the wiring diagram and you can pretty much figure out where every single wire goes to based on the colour of the connector, the wire, and the stripe.

These days Citroen write an ID code on every single wire, every 150mm or so i guess, sounds great, every wire has a unique number. Then go and have a look at the 4000 page wiring diagram! That takes a pretty long time to work through i can tell you.

Multi connector to the parcel shelf is a winner (Pug 306 models come with one on a stretchy coiley cable! WINNER).

C Pillars are for heros that know about cross overs!

Minidisc = ATRAC = 100,000x quality improvement over MP3! (give or take, and assuming you can hear audio quality over the squeeks and rattles)

Standard speaker wiring = very poor quality. Best bet, rip the whole lot out and refit. Doesn't take long to do, its quite accessible.

Well stereo is in,MD works fine,shame about the speakers !!
But I cant get the radio to work,I mean you can tune it but get no sound.Seems like an aerial problem.Is there anyway to check an aeriel?

first of all, check the mass with an Ohm mtr. it's the problem with older cars, and when you have an other aerial, check the amplifier of it.