Radio

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Caradiodoc

I sell and repair oem radios at the nation's second largest old car show and get a lot of requests for the pin diagrams so I printed up a bunch of little handouts. Here's a copy of the two 7-pin plugs you will have.

Keep in mind that all 8 speaker wires will have 6 volts on them. If you run one wire to a speaker and the second speaker wire is grounded, you will only get half of the audio signal and that 6 volts across the speaker will cause the voice coil to overheat.

If you understand an audio signal and how it is alternating current, most home audio amps have two stages for each speaker. One stage amplifies the positive half of the signal and the other stage amplifies the negative half. If only one stage is working, you will have very severe distortion. That's not how the car systems work. In their systems both stages amplify the entire signal. When one stage is dead you will get half the volume, but depending on how that stage failed, you might have 0 volts on that speaker wire. There will be no distortion from the signal, but you could hear distortion from the voice coil being extended to the end of its travel. That will damage speakers too. So, the bottom line is no speaker wires can be grounded.

I have the audio output ICs for this model but they very rarely fail.

Your radio is actually a '92 model. There were a lot of different model numbers that all look the same on the front. I had the older version in my '88 Grand Caravan. About the only thing I ever ran into with this model is a slipping belt for the cassette player. It takes the highest torque to run the eject mechanism. When the belt would slip, it wouldn't cycle through the eject sequence so the tape / radio switch wouldn't switch back to radio.

Your radio is also an Infinity model. That means it came with speakers that had amplifiers bolted to them. Newer cars often use a remote-mounted amp in the trunk, under a rear seat, or behind the right front kick panel. All Chrysler radios run speakers directly. Unlike the confusing GM and Ford systems that must be used with or without an amp, depending on the model, you do not HAVE to use the amp with any of the Chrysler radios. Their amps do not increase volume or power. They are specifically for tone conditioning for the shape of the vehicle. The difference between the Infinity and non-Infinity radios is a dozen parts in the audio output circuitry that affect tone response. Infinity radios put out less bass. It is made up in the amplifiers. If you use your Infinity radio with regular speakers, you will find yourself turning the bass up most of the way. If you had a non-Infinity radio in a car with amplified speakers, there would be too much bass unless you turned it down most of the way.

In these connectors, the left one is the gray plug. The first wire is usually pink and gets connected directly to the battery for the station presets and clock memory. If you're using this for a shop radio and are turning on a power supply instead of a battery, you can connect it to the next wire in the plug, a red one for the switched 12 volts. The radio will play fine but it will start at 12:00 each time you turn it on, and you'll have to retune to the station you want. It will start out at 530 AM.

You don't need the third and fourth wires. The fourth one connects to the tail lights and tells the display to dim when the head lights are turned on. The third one connects to the dash lights and tells the display how much to dim. You also won't use the last one, "Mute", in the gray plug. That was used on the cars with talking dashboards or factory-installed cell phones.

The fifth and sixth wires, along with the first six wires in the black plug on the right are for the four speakers. Use the RF- and RF+ for one speaker. The last wire, "Ant", is a switched 12 volt that turns on when the ignition switch and radio are turned on. In other words, the radio is playing. That wire will turn on a power antenna relay or the relay that turns on the remote amp(s). You don't have to connect anything to it. I use it on my display board at the car show to run tiny bulbs that show which radio is playing.

Caradiodoc