chrysler infinity wiring harness

I installed a Pioneer Premier DEH-66DH that was in a 96 Plymouth Voyager that didn't have an Infinity sound system. And I installed it in a 89 Plymouth Voyager that did have a factory Infinity system. I used the wiring harness from the 96 Voyager. I understand that I should have used a harness made for the 89 Voyager. It plugged right in and seems to be working fine, although I think that there should be more power. When I had this stereo in the 96 Voyager (with cheap factory speakers) it sounded a little better. I've seen the other posts about hooking up the power antena wire to the amps for power. Would I be better off just buying a new harness?  Are the Infinity speakers any good? If I have to I will rewire if I add new speakers.

It's funny cuz I found myself in quite a similar situation a couple years ago. I had a pioneer DEH-46DH and 4 pioneer speakers in an 89 voyager w/out infinity system.  Then when the car got totalled by the tornado, I moved everything to a 96 caravan (w/out infinity).  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I didn't even have to redo the harness for the radio at all.  And those perfect-fit radios sure are easy to put in and out.

ANYWAYS, the harnesses in infinity systems are identical to the harnesses in standard systems.  The decks output a high level signal in both cases, it's just that in the infinity systems the factory amps will add a little juice to the signal and split it so that it will go to all the 8 or 10 speakers in the vehicle.

As you know, none of these vans have power antennas so you might be wondering what the power antenna wire is there for.  It's to turn on the infinity factory amplifiers, and for non-infinity systems it serves no purpose with factory equipment.  However, if you have an infinity system and do not connect that wire, the result is usually no sound at all, and not lower quality sound as you seem to be experiencing.  So I don't know if that's necessarily your problem, but the wire should be hooked up anyways.  It goes to the blue/white wire in the pioneer harness.

Did you use one of those quick harneses that come with plugs on both ends?  Or did you use the more common type of harness where you plug in to the factory harness, and then run the bare wire ends to the bare wire ends of the pioneer harness?  Also I should note that some of the infinity systems have a GREEN/ black wire that  is kinda separate from the main radio harness, but still back there behind the radio.  This is the ground for the factory amplifier and must be connected to a ground for the amps to work properly.

It's hard to say for sure whether or not the problem is that the infinity speakers are too old or their amps are getting old and less efficient, etc.  For a factory system they are not bad speakers at all, but they don't even compare to most aftermarket speakers and decks.  Right now I'm still using the DEH-46dh in the 96 caravan, and have replaced the 2 dash and 2 rear side panel speakers with aftermarket ones, and added aftermarket speakers to the front doors and the rear tweeter pillars, and it's still all running off of the one pioneer deck with factory speaker wiring (they run the same wiring even if the car doesn't come with the infinity system).  It sounds a lot better than any infinity factory system I've ever heard.  Your premier deck has the same Mosfet 45 amp chip in it that mine does.

Do you know what the 89 voyager sounded like before you swapped out the infinity head unit?  Or do you still have the infinity head unit lying around somewhere?  If you could do a quick side by side test to see which one sounds better, that would help narrow down the causes for the difference in sound.  Most likely it's just that the infinity system in that 89 voyager is 7 years older...

Thanks for the info! Yes I used one of those harnesses that has the plugs on both ends. The old Infinity system sounded pretty close to what I have now. It must be just old speakers that are causing me headaches.

Now, how do you wire in new speakers into the 4 wire infinity system? I know that the rear speakers are 6x9 and I understand that the dash speakers are 4". Are the dash speakers easy to replace? I have a pair of Pioneer TS-A1648 -1/2" coaxial spaekers that I bought for another car that were never installed. Could I use them in the doors? I know that I will have to do some cutting and that doesn't bother me. Or would it be better to replace the dash speakers. You would think that the 6-1/2" speakers would sound better due to thier size.

For the rear I have a set of Kenwood box speakers. I'll use a fish tape and run the wires under the carpet straight up to the front of the minivan. Hope that works cause I would hate to take all that trim up. Can I tap into the rear speaker wires somewhere? I've looked for them but I can't seem to find them under the side panels.

The van is used for transporting my 4 sons and for delivering outdoor furniture that I manufacture. I just started up my company and money is tight. I need some decent sounding toons though.

Thanks!

If I had to choose between replacing the dash speakers and the door speakers, I'd probably do the door speakers just because the aftermarket replacements for these have the potential to add some good low frequency sound to your system in addition to giving you the highs.  Because of their location and the smaller size of their woofers, the ones in the dash could not give you much bass even if you swapped them out with new aftermarket ones.

Only problem with the door speakers is that unless you can figure out a way to use the factory wiring, you'll have to run new speaker wiring which is not really a big deal when you're staying inside the vehicle, but with door speakers you have to run the wire through the rubber boot between the door and the inside of the car.  Sometimes this is easy, but sometimes it is nearly impossible.  You can pretty much tell just by looking at it if it's gonna be a pain though.

All you need to do is run wires up to the rear of the pioneer deck, and at some point on the wiring harness, cut the speaker wires and use the ends still attatched to the pioneer deck, to connect to the speaker wires you just ran.

As for the sizing of the speakers, I do not remember exactly what the infinity systems in the 89s look like.  I have seen them before but it was a while ago, and mine (which I knew inside and out) was just the standard 4 speaker system with 5.25s in the dash, and 6x9s in the tailgate.

I will tell you thought that I'm pretty sure I was able to get away with using just the pioneer deck to power all 8 aftermarket speakers currently in my 96 caravan because the factory wiring is done in series (as opposed to parallel wiring, which would create a huge strain on the pioneer deck).  I do not know if this is the case ith the wiring in the 89s so if you do decide to replace speakers in the system you might want to start out with just 2 or 4 of them.

It looks like I will just replace the speakers with the ones that I mentioned. 6-1/2" in the doors and the Kenwoods in the rear. I'll also run new wires. That way I'll know that the wiring is correct. Thanks for the time that you took to explain things.