inez, the ground from the HU worked beautifuly

an easy fix, for anyone who wants this type of thing -


also gave me a chance to relocate the hide away unit to under the seat!

 

I'd like to check it out sometime if you're near Calabasas again.

 

absolutely, ill shoot an email over next time im free and out there

 

i installed my radar detector with the head unit positive wire (which was on all the time) and the negative at the ground of the chassis. I connected the detecting wire to the ground.

 

is the wire ALWAYS green? cause my uncle in japan wants to get rid of that parking brake thing..but his works a little differently. whenever the car is stopped (going 0 mph) the tv goes back on. anyone know the fix to this?

 

generally, ground wires are green. this is an electrical industry standard. in general, red indicates power, black or white indicates common, and green indicates ground. black can be either power or common/0V. but green is usually ground. as far as japan goes, i don't know about their wiring standards.

is his car an automatic? perhaps its hooked into the speedometer instead of the parking brake. finding the enabling signal wire for the tv and connecting it to ground should work. just figure out which one it is, cut it, and attach it to the chassis. if that doesn't work, i'm not sure then.

 

I work at circuit city installing car audio for my living. As far as the dvd player working while driving.....definately groung it to the wiring harness for your radio.....just tap it.....DONT cut it. As far as colors go.....usually on new head units yellow means constant/12v. Red is usually an accessory wire. READ CAREFULLY, ive seen too many people mix these up and start blowing fuses. It seems backwards but sometimes this is how it is.

 

the best idea to avoid conflict with the police is to use a switch that connects ground to your p brake wire when on. this way if you get pulled over you can quickly shut it off and show the cop that you can't watch it while driving or else he'll quickly give you a ticket. my switch is in the center console right beside my brake handle so that if they want to see it work with the brake then i can flip it on/off while raising/lowering my brake. i have been pulled over and asked to demonstrate this before and it works fine.

btw, i also work at a stereo shop installing mobile audio/video and green is only ground on home wiring, not car. don't mix the two because they are different. and if you mix the red and yellow you won't blow any fuses, just you will lose any memory features every time you turn the car off. the only way you blow fuses is touching a live wire (yellow or red when accessory is on) to ground. this should never happen since you should spend the $15 on a wire harness adaptor and wire that to the HU harness before even going near the car.

if you want to see what i mean about the switch location just pm me and i will go out and take a pic for you

 

why is cutting it so bad? if you cut it, you disconnect it from any other circuitry it might be connected to.

i am an electrical engineer for a living, and you should never have more connection points in a circuit than you need to, especially on a ground wire.

 

and not even that. it is a ground (common), therefore all the circuitry is inherently connected through the ground wires anyway. check it with a meter. use a continuity tester and attach one lead to the outer shell of your antenna and the other end to the chassis of your radio housing. low and behold there will be continuity there just like any ground wires that you want to test. infact you could play a little game with yourself to see that ALL the grounds in the car are interconnected!!

 

I just got an in-dash put it. My wire that is connected to the parking brake is a pink wire, heh.

Anyways, on the install instructions, it says that the wire must be connected to the parking brake according to federal law. If I just don't even connect to anything, does it make the whole dvd not even work?

Also, if that doesn't work, just unhook the pink wire and put it to a ground?

 

Ok, well I went out and did my own investigating today:

I took the green wire that was tapped into my parking brake wire (or your green wire you are suppose to tap into it if you are doing the install yourself), and took it out and grounded it right next to the parking brak... very easy.

In the pictures, the blue tape is where it was put by Best Buy, but I went back and put the green wire to a ground.