Radios revisited

[chrisc]

Hi,
Ive decided that the original radio cassette is well and truly out of its
reliable working lifespan (pity as it was a nice pioneer one that I imagine to be reasonably rare!). So ive bought a new mp3 cd player (that looks TOTALLY out of character with the rest of the car, but never mind!), and im having troubles.
Naturally the cars never heard of an iso wiring loom, but after a bit of messing about everything is working, except the speakers! the iso loom spec requires a seperate earth to each speaker, but I dont seem to have that lurking anywhere, just a positive to the speakers on each side of the car. Im not clear why this is stopping it from working, as surely the speakers are earthed somewhere reasonable otherwise they wouldnt have worked before! Any clues welcome.

As an aside, if anyone has a dash piece modified to accept modern radios that they are willing to part with id be interested as im currently running about without that piece on to save me having to cut into it.

oh, and I have tested the radio in another car and it works fine.

[Jon]

When you say earth do you mean -ve, if so surely your speakers need a negative wired all the way back to the head unit same as for the positive.

[chrisc]

Yeah, thats what I mean. Bugger. Thats going to be time consuming running those wires all over the place. I wonder how the old one worked.....

[chrisc]

Well, it was a bit of an epic but I know have a working mp3 cd player!

Main problem was caused by spaghetti that traced to an ancient pioneer amp, and explained a random knob on the dash (fader). Took out the amp (dont really need its 20+20w max power!) and fader, and extended the speaker wires, which had been joined at the fader to provide only 2 channels going to the head unit, up to the top so now I have proper 4 channel sound and an iso compliant loom! Or at least I would have 4 channel sound if the wires to the rear right speaker werent broken somewhere on their route.

[chrisc]

Ok, here we are again. Ive got myself another radio surround to save me destroying me very perfect original one, and ive filed out all the interior bit to make horizontal room for the new radio, but im not sure what approach to take with making vertical room.

The options are (and its just a question of which will look less bad!)

a) file / cut away about half of the lower bit. Ive seen a coupe which had it done like this and i felt it looked a bit untidy.

b) cut out the top cross-bar type bit completely. I havent seen this done before and this is sort of the way im leaning at the moment because the main dashboard should hide the fact that its missing.

Anybody got an opinion on this?

oh and theres always option c) dont put on the radio surround