[MaddOps]

This is an attempt at the LAST YJ Stereo Wiring Thread You'll Ever Need!
It may be a little presumptuous on my part, but I really hope it is the last thread anyone will need to get this fixed.

For days and weeks I'd looked for wiring information for my 1993 Jeep Wrangler YJ only to find everything but what I was looking for. I'd finally decided to pull the trigger and extract the radio and see the extent of the POs damage to the radio wiring. *** had the stereo direct run to the battery and to the speakers, and did it all with crappy speaker wire. Like all the rest of you my factory end had been sheared clear off. Right back to the binding tape. Live wires just bouncing around inside the dash. Here's what I found when I scaled a little tape back.

My own private nightmare

Fanned out to show colors better

Then I did what all of us do, start scouring the all the forums for half right information, or to find that everyone who got it to work, ran all new wires, or doesn't have your wiring colors. Hopefully I've fixed that.

I spent about 4 hours last night, and another 5 or 6 today to find, reference, and cross check everything I could get my filthy mitts on to bring you the information you've been seeking. Get comfortable. This will be a long post.

Your fancy new YJ probably came with one of two different stereos:
AM/FM with no Cassette Player

(thanks bill8bud jeepforums)

or the AM/FM w/ Cassette Player (you were ballin' for sure)

(from ebay)

They had this label on top of them

(credit CDMFabrication.com - Read the page, seriously)

The stereos were connected by this bastard below.
Here is the bane of our existence (for the stereo installers anyway). The Chrysler 1-Piece Connector PU-9549A

This image courtesy of: http://www.tehnomagazin.com/Auto-radio-car-connector/CHRYSLER-Car-Radio-Wiring-Connector.htm

This one little missing piece has left all of us wringing our hands and gnashing our teeth, and having a hell of a time trying to mount an aftermarket stereo. After much research and puzzling I believe I've finally figured it out. I know that I have the late 93-95 squared away, and the early 93 and previous setup seems to have been repeated by enough people I believe it to be correct. It seems 93 seemed to spawn the switch off between what I needed to find, and what everyone else with older Jeeps and early 93's had.

THIS IS THE LAYOUT AT THE BACK OF THE CONNECTOR.
Despite my planning I wired the stereo with the non factory connector and put all the speakers backwards. Attention to detail.

(credit, ALL ME BABY!)

Please note that the power antenna is never used for a YJ. (I'm sure there's an oddball exception out there, but I couldn't find it.)

Most of your looms (harness in the dash/cut wire bundle) should have 13 wires. Only 12 are used in the connector. The black ground wire did not go to the harness. They had a spade connector and attached to the stereo itself. See the connector pics below to see what the factory spade looks like.

Here's my verification for the late 93 -95 radio loom coloring (I bought the harness previously pictured):
When looking at the back of the plug, the colors in the above map match perfectly.
Top side

Bottom

(credit Myself)

Here's my verification of the early 93 and previous wire loom (sorry it's a smaller pic):

(credit ebay)

Now, if you want to get by with running direct speaker wires to the stereo, and bypassing the harness, the only wires you require from the harness (seriously, if you have one for the love of all things Holy, don't cut it!!) are the Battery Constant/Memory, the Ignition/ACC wire, the Panel Dimmer Wire and the Ground. I won't judge. Much. But I didn't go through all this work so you could just throw things together. I digress.

Now you're probably thinking, what's the deal with the LCD Dimmer Wire and the Panel Dimmer Wire. Allow me to illuminate things for you. (See what I did there?)

So the LCD Dimmer Wire looks to have run the brightness for the LCD screen and only the LCD screen on the AM/FM and AM/FM/Cassette. EDIT: The LCD dimmer wire was a trigger wire to dim the display when the headlights were turned on (only on the factory units pictured above). (From: user fishadventure)

The Panel Dimmer wire runs the stereo's button illumination so it goes up and down with the dial that changes the brightness of your gauges.

(credit ebay)

If you look closely you'll notice that all of the buttons are "light thru". They're white plastic that's been masked and painted so they light up from the back. The Bass and Treble knobs too. Long story short, that's why you'll probably want the Panel Dimmer wire instead of your LCD Dimmer wire. Either of them may work, but I'm going to ignore the LCD wire.

Now, if you're wanting to use the adapter for the stock harness, or you're looking to make longer wires to relocate the stereo, you'll know what and where to stick things. Get that out of your ear. It doesn't go there.

So what to do if an original isn't available, you want to harness your new stereo to your factory adapter, or you need to wire up some speakers? Well, I looked that up too. These manufacturers may change over time, so if it goes out of date, drop me a line and I'll fix what I can.

Replace the missing OEM Adapter, wiring color isn't close to correct, but it beats having direct connection to the wires and leaving the next guy with the nightmare, right?

Metra Part # 71-1002 | Jeep Eagle wire harness | Metra Online

Here's what you'll need to plug into the factory OEM plug (or the part above you just put in) from your new aftermarket radio,

Metra Part # 70-1002 | Jeep Eagle wire harness | Metra Online

Speaker Connector Adapters. Wire your new hardware into the stock sockets.

Metra Part # 72-1002 | Jeep wire harness | Metra Online

You're saying, "Yeah, MaddOps, that's great, but what about the rear speakers?" We're getting there, just calm down.

So rear speakers/halo speakers/soundbar were how things were done when these YJ's were new. The rear speaker wires from the harness go to a plug under the passenger side dash. This was designed to connect to the soundbar. If you were really fancy you also had the dome light in the middle of it. Hang a disco ball and you had a mobile rave wherever you were at.

I verified that the wires in the soundbars matched the same coloring as those in the connector/wire bundle.

Here's an example for a later model soundbar. These Pink/Yellow connectors are for the dome light. Swanky, neh?
These are the connections under the dash.

Here's what the connectors look like (this is on a harness that's not in the dash. I bought it for exploratory surgery.
That wrapped bundle of wire on that connector is the pigtail blockout for the rear speakers. Funny thing about this connector, it has connections for front AND rear speakers. The harness from the light bar is only wired for the rear speakers. So those creative folks may be able to wire a set of fronts and rears into remote locations. I don't know if it will work, I'm just passing along the info.

Here's the connector for the dome light (if you have a soundbar with one of them):

You'll also note that the owner of this harness couldn't be bothered with getting the adapters that plug into the, now missing, sockets for the front speaker wiring.
They just took both pos and neg leads and double spliced them into single pos and neg connections.

It's my hope, that you found what you had to have, and are on your merry way to having the top down with tunes blaring without fear of a fire or the lingering mystery of what could have been had you just wired everything correctly. Or you're like me and you're a stickler for doing things like they should be done. I really hope I've answered all of your questions that you might have and that this helps all of you wire your stereos, or to make sense of the hacked wiring left behind by the PO and it doesn't leave you p.o.'d.

I'm by no means an expert. At all. I just did a lot of research and matched up pictures and crawled around in my Jeep with a headlamp at night to look at things.

I'll also link to two PDFs that are the wiring diagram for the YJs and the install instructions for the stereo from the factory.
***UPDATE 04/04/22, the below PDF's now go to a dropbox link.
YJ Factory Wiring Diagram
Audio Systems section from FSM(?) Covers YJ Cherokee and Grand Cherokee

If this still didn't fix your little red wagon, here's some additional resources. But they're mostly where I pulled a lot of this info from, not to mention the forums.
http://www.modifiedlife.com/1993-jeep-wrangler-car-radio-stereo-wiring-diagram/

Early 93 and previous
Free Car Alarm, Remote Start, and Car Stereo Wiring

Late 93 and after
95 Jeep Wrangler Rio Stereo Wiring

 

[piotrsko]

I feel your pain. Btdt. My used vehicles come in 2 flavors: BEFORE dash fire and after. Needless to say that's a one time event, at least for me.

You may not get a lot of notice, but from me, an honest thank you VERY much.

 

[Que89YJ]

Nice write up! Can I add 2 things. Most radios case ground through a cap. Running a ground wire/strap on the case to the nearest body ground will take care of it. The other is the antenna side. Same deal. Run a ground strap/wire from the antenna to chassis. This will eliminate any differential current by making the shield the same potential on both sides. Bookmark added for my list. Nice job!

 

[Mace350]

Thanks,

 

[MaddOps]

UPDATE 10/14/2014 - New pics of Factory Harness for 93-95.

 

[rebelone50]

Thank you, that must have been tedious. Information on our JEEP is always appreciated

 

[igifford]

Man I wish I had seen this before I spent the last 2 days changing out a head unit and speakers. Maybe you can answer the question that has been bugging me:

From the head unit there are two wires (+ and -) for each speaker. However, by the time you get to the connectors for the factory speakers there are 4 wires. I assume that is what the Metra 72-1002 speaker adapters are for (to plug into the black connector with 4 wires and outlet 2 wires to the aftermarket speakers). So the question is, why do the 2 wires from the harness turn into 4 wires by the time they get to the speaker? Do they split somewhere behind the dash and downstream of the harness?

 

[IA93Javert]

This is awesome. Thanks for the hard work. This had to have taken awhile... and a few beers...

 

[MaddOps]

Man I wish I had seen this before I spent the last 2 days changing out a head unit and speakers. Maybe you can answer the question that has been bugging me:

From the head unit there are two wires (+ and -) for each speaker. However, by the time you get to the connectors for the factory speakers there are 4 wires. I assume that is what the Metra 72-1002 speaker adapters are for (to plug into the black connector with 4 wires and outlet 2 wires to the aftermarket speakers). So the question is, why do the 2 wires from the harness turn into 4 wires by the time they get to the speaker? Do they split somewhere behind the dash and downstream of the harness?

So the question is, why do the 2 wires from the harness turn into 4 wires by the time they get to the speaker? Do they split somewhere behind the dash and downstream of the harness?

Sorry I missed your reply. I have no idea why they did the 4 speaker wire thing. I haven't actually replaced the front speakers yet. But yes, that is what that Metra adapter is for, to take the two wires into the factory 4 setup. If I had to guess at it, I'd say it's because those extra two wires run to the connector that feeds the sound bar. As I said in my post that connector has wires for all of the speakers, not just the "rears". So, that's probably why there's a 4 wire setup. Maybe they had plans to add extra speakers somewhere else, or it would have allowed for hooking in rocker panel/door speakers of some sort. Or center speakers if you wanted to get creative. You could probably do it by removing the connector clips out of the blockout pigtail to make leads for other fronts. This is all purely speculation on my part, but the logic of it makes sense to me.

 

[MaddOps]

This is awesome. Thanks for the hard work. This had to have taken awhile... and a few beers...

I actually skip the beers when working on the vehicle. Otherwise I'm prone to "F This! Close enough!" and I don't do things like they should be done, or I forgot if I did or didn't do something, or I'll end up with "bonus parts." Afterwards, a good hot shower, a good meal, and delicious beer.

 

[mike134]

I actually skip the beers when working on the vehicle. Otherwise I'm prone to "F This! Close enough!" and I don't do things like they should be done, or I forgot if I did or didn't do something, or I'll end up with "bonus parts." Afterwards, a good hot shower, a good meal, and delicious beer.

I'm the other way... Too meticulous if I haven't had a beer. After a couple Great Lake's Christmas Ales, I'm more in the "F-it, lets get it done, hand me the hack saw"

I try to use both to my advantage. Research, plan, investigate with the multimeter before hand, then grab a couple beers and go out and do it.

There are two types of people that are successful in engineering. The ones that plan plan plan plan then do. And the ones that do redo redo redo redo. One of those people has a cheaper nice looking final product, the other type of person has found all of the unexpected problems.

 

[langwilliams]

Good write up. I had to cut my factory connector off. It looked like it was over headed/melted. I have a pioneer hard wired into it now. May order that stock plug an the after market adapter if I have to change anything again.

 

[kjg26]

Thanks,

Marked! !

 

[AshMannis]

I have a 92 YJ and am in the process of installing a new radio. This has helped me so much, as the wiring is a huge mess. The new radio comes with a remote, not that I really need it, but which factory wire would it connect to?

 

[gotswap]

Holy crap, hell of a write up!!!!!

 

[Mookdog]

I have a 92 YJ and am in the process of installing a new radio. This has helped me so much, as the wiring is a huge mess. The new radio comes with a remote, not that I really need it, but which factory wire would it connect to?

New radio has a remote wire? Sure its not a remote lead wire? Typically not needed for aftermarket radios. I've only ever used remote turn on leads for amplifiers and what not. On previous cars I've hooked that wire to power antenna wires

I recently installed a new radio in my mess of a 93 Yj thanks to years of PO's splicing and taping everything like madmen. Just power, ground, constant and I ran all new speaker wire since the existing wire was a disaster.

Also cant recommend a solder gun highly enough :highfive:

 

[Silverblackjeep]

I went through all this several years ago on my 89 YJ. What a teedious but sastisfactory accomplishment it is if one does it correctly. It took awhile but turned out perfect. My question to you is this, I am fixing to add a stock probably around 92 or 93 sound bar with center light on it. I am pretty sure my 89 does not have the necessary connections to hook up factory. I will be able to figure it all out, but was curious to whether you might have any additional information to help with this undertaking. I do not have doors on my jeep so I had to disconnect the interior light factory switch on both sides, no big deal, but I believe that will come into play in hooking up the light on the soundbar. It has an on and off switch on the bar light, just like the interior light switch with the dimmer. I am guessing on the speaker side, I will have to spice in directly to each front speaker for the corresponding side. Also I have the factory radio with cassette. Thanks

 

[NHfireLJ]

The factory head unit will have outputs for rear speakers, go to first post in this thread , don't spice into the front speakers as the head can drive 2 speakers on a single channel... you'll kill your speakers....

Wire the soundbar lights into one of the courtesy lamps under the dash, should be one on each side , and you can use the oem headlight switch (dimmer control) to turn on interior lamps