Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

by **01Sport** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 3:16 pm

Car stereos have a bunch of wires that I don't think are needed in an application like a trailer, but I could be wrong. Does anyone have any information on wiring a car stereo in a trailer? I hooked up my power and ground and I get nothing. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

by **NismoGriff** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 3:38 pm

If your running 4 speakers you will need all the wires except for maybe the remote turn on lead that is used to turn on an external amp. So you'll need the yellow hooked to +12v constant and the red hooked to +12v switched and the black hooked to ground to at least get it to turn on. If your not concerned about keeping memory on the radio, you can connect the constant and ignition lead from the head unit to one switched source from the teardrop.

by **Woody** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 9:40 pm

I would hook up the red wire and the yellow wire together with one switch. Memory power is nice(yellow wire) but it does create a parasitic load on the battery when not in use or for long term storage. I have never worried about memory when camping in an area. I set the stations for the area in the memory when we arrive and when we leave it gets erased when I shut down the trailer for transport. But the parasitc load will wipe a battery out pretty fast so it is better to totally dissconnect the radio power or anything with an active memory function for transport or storage. Plus if you are using a battery maintainer or trickle chargers it will eventual damage them. Overtime from constantly sensing the constant voltage drop due to the parasitic load and trying to but never quite fully charge or maintain the battery. Remember that most battery chargers are just that chargers. In this case they end up performing a power supply role of which they are not designed for. Which will eventually cause them to fail and that sucks when camping and hearing some music, the race or the game and the battery dies off

by **asianflava** » Tue Jun 09, 2009 12:38 am

All you need is the pos (Red and Yellow) and neg (Black)

The rest will depend on your speakers, some will have 2 pairs and some have 4 pairs. Each pair will go to a speaker.

by **01Sport** » Tue Jun 09, 2009 1:05 pm

OK, so if I only have 2 speakers, I will use the 2 speaker wires, I believe gray/black and white/black (I don't have it in front of me so I don't know that for sure), then the black, do I ground this directly to the frame or can it go to the ground on the fuse block?, and then the power. The power is where I may be lost a little. I use the red and yellow? Do they both get wired together to the positive wire that runs to the fuse block? Do I need to wire this directly to the battery or is running it to the block ok? The wire harness has an inline 5 amp fuse, do I need another 5 amp fuse at the block? This part is always foreign to me, thanks for your help.

by **asianflava** » Tue Jun 09, 2009 5:13 pm

Don't confuse the speaker wires with the power wires. The speaker wires (I don't know your particular color) let's say are gray and green. The gray wire will go to the + terminal of the speaker and the gray/black will go to the - terminal of the speaker. The same goes for the green pair, green to the + terminal of the speaker and the green/black goes to the - terminal of the speaker. These do not get attached to anything except for the speaker terminals, and the speaker terminals only attach to these wires.

The black wire can be connected to the - side of the fuse block if it is easier.
In a car the red gets connected to the battery (always on) and the yellow gets connected to a switch source (like the ignition). It's setup like this so that your radio will turn off when you turn your car off. The red is always hot so that you don't loose your radio preset channels, EQ settings, etc.

In our trailers, some people do like Woody suggested and connect both the red and yellow wires to a switch. This is because the radio constantly draws a small amount of power. Since we don't use our trailers every day like our cars, you are better off disconnecting the radio so as to prevent draining your battery.

Note: wire colors are arbitrary, it will depend on your particular radio. On some radios, the yellow wires that I'm talking about is orange. There should be a wiring diagram on top of the radio.

by **01Sport** » Tue Jun 09, 2009 5:34 pm

Thanks for your reply.

I guess my main questions are about the power, the speakers are fine, I just can't get anything to come on. When you are talking about a switch, are you talking about a basic toggle switch that I will turn on when the radio is in use and turn off when I'm not using the trailer or is there something special I am suppose to be using?

by **01Sport** » Wed Jun 10, 2009 12:41 am