95 Civic Stereo Install

Printed From: the12volt.com
Forum Name: Car Audio
Forum Discription: Car Stereos, Amplifiers, Crossovers, Processors, Speakers, Subwoofers, etc.
URL: https://www.the12volt.com/installbay/forum_posts.asp?tid=36570
Printed Date: July 21, 2025 at 12:39 AM

Topic: 95 Civic Stereo Install

Posted By: abhi1234
Subject: 95 Civic Stereo Install
Date Posted: August 01, 2004 at 6:21 PM

I just bought a new cd player to replace the old one in my honda civic 1995. I hooked up all the wires to the harness...black with black, red with red, yellow with yellow and so on. When I turned it on...no power...

So I called tech support for my cd player and they said that I need to hook up the yellow(memory) wire to a 12v constant wire...which I should be able to locate inside my dash. Well, I cannot find this wire.

I checked all the fuses, they're working fine. What I found is that the stereo and the cigarete lighter fuses are the same...that is it's one fuse for the two of them. Now, the cig. lighter is getting power, but the stereo is not.

How can I find this 12v constant wire and/or can I connect my stereo's yellow wire to the cig. lighter wire and get the 12v that way? Will the cig lighter still function?

Thanks

Replies:

Posted By: dpaton
Date Posted: August 01, 2004 at 8:43 PM

According to the ETM for my 95 EX, +12 constant can be had from the WHITE/ blue wire in the stereo harness. It's also available at the under dash fuse housing on the 2nd-from-left QC tab after installing fuse 17 (use a 10A). I prefer the second option, since it's both factory and easy to get to without any damage. The QC tabs are regular 0.250", so crimp and go.

-dave

-------------
This is not a sig. This is a duck. Quack.

Posted By: Velocity Motors
Date Posted: August 02, 2004 at 7:49 AM

Don't assume that the wiring colors are the same for every deck. Make sure that you meter your wires because some players out there do not have the same wiring as other's and you may damage either the CD player or the car if you hook up the wires.

-------------
Jeff
Velocity Custom Home Theater
Mobile Audio/Video Specialist
Morden, Manitoba CANADA

Posted By: abhi1234
Date Posted: August 02, 2004 at 11:57 AM

Ok I bought a mulimeter and checked out the wires out of the harness. Surely enough, there's no power out of the yellow, 12v+. So the next step is to do what you suggested, dpaton. As soon as the sun shows up that is...

by the way dpaton, did your honda have the wires for the rear speakers? Or did you have to wire them....coz that'll be a b****!! There are wires in the harness and they go in the tube...but i don't know if they go all the way back. I don't see any.

Posted By: abhi1234
Date Posted: August 02, 2004 at 6:21 PM

Got it to work!!

Thanks guys.

Still unsure about back speakers but will work on it.

Posted By: dpaton
Date Posted: August 02, 2004 at 8:11 PM

abhi1234 wrote:

by the way dpaton, did your honda have the wires for the rear speakers? Or did you have to wire them....coz that'll be a b****!! There are wires in the harness and they go in the tube...but i don't know if they go all the way back. I don't see any.

Check up behind the various and sundry cutouts in the deck lid. Mine came with the premium sound system, so yeah, mine were wired posted_image

If you don't have it, the Helms manuals (general and ETM) are life savers. They're infinitely better than the Chilton crap, and have nice things like the factory codes for the special tools you need to do some things (valves, transmission, etc). In terms of audio, they show you how to get at anything, where everything is, little spaces to hide things sfely, and the ETM especially, shows all the wiring you could ever want. The joys of factory authorized documentation...

https://www.helminc.com

That's not just for Honda guys either. EVERYONE deserves a Helms manual. The $80 or so is worth every penny.

If you do run your own wires (highly recommended, the stock ones are extra tiny), shoot them down the passenger side. Under the door sill you can get behind the edge of the carpet. There's a piece of plastic that makes a space between the carpet and the sheet metal just right for a pair of speaker wires. Bring them up and around the back seat (pop off the pass. side interior body panel) and push them through the little hole over the wheel well into the trunk, and behind the passenger side trunk carpet. There's another little hole that gets you from there into the decklid, and you can fish them out to the stock speaker locations from there. It's not nearly as painful as it sounds. I can do it in about an hour after one previous attempt. The main trick is to pop out the passenger seat first, then take off the back of the back seat, then the seat cushion, then the interior panel. Don't forget to remove the screw down at the bottom. A 10mm socket is your friend.

If you disassemble things in the right order the 5th gen Civics are pretty easy to work on. The the only two really awful things arefishing wires to the doors through the stock boots on a coupe, and replacing the antenna. Especially the antenna. That's just evil.

-dave
PS- Out of curiosity, what body style is this going into? coupe, sedan or hatch? I've only ever worked on the first two.

-------------
This is not a sig. This is a duck. Quack.

Posted By: dpaton
Date Posted: August 02, 2004 at 8:15 PM

More specifically:
1995 Civic manuals

-dave

-------------
This is not a sig. This is a duck. Quack.

Posted By: abhi1234
Date Posted: August 03, 2004 at 11:05 AM

Thanks dpaton

I looked at the side panels last night and there weren't any wires...so I just ran my own wires...the whole thing took less then an hour...and now i have a fully functional system.

All I gotta do is mount them to the panel some how...but that I can figure out on my own...i think lol

Thanks a lot for your help pal

Posted By: dpaton
Date Posted: August 03, 2004 at 5:40 PM

abhi1234 wrote:

All I gotta do is mount them to the panel some how...but that I can figure out on my own...i think lol

Thanks a lot for your help pal

I'm assuming from the questions that you have a DX coupe or DX/LX 4dr with the base stereo system. The rear deck won't have cutouts for the speakers. If you look from the inside of the trunk upward, you should see the holes on either side to mount the 6.5"s to. I did this in my old car, a 93LX, and this was the progression:

Order Helms manuals for car. Read them. Repeat until you can go through the following process in your sleep.
Go to Honda, order rear deck speaker mounting rings and grilles.
Remove rear deck panel
Mount speaker rings to rear deck sheet metal
Reinstall rear deck as much as possible and mark mounting ring locations
Remove rear deck and make initial cuts inside the lines you marked
Replace, retrace, recut until it fits

It's a time consuming process to get it exactly right, but it's worth it in my opinion. I originally mounted my 6.5"s to the rear deck panel, and they rattled pretty badly, in addition to being less than secure. I recut the rear tray to use the factory mounts and was a whole lot happier. Plus, the factory rar speaker covers make it look like the system is a little more stock than it is, lowering the odds of theft (hopefully).

I can take some pictures of the rings and the holes in my EX, but I don't think it'll help, since the premium system uses different grilles.

-dave

-------------
This is not a sig. This is a duck. Quack.