bridging Ignition and Constant wire

To make it easier for you to understand, the constant wire should be hooked to a constant +12 volts, this is what keeps memory in your HU ( radio station presets, clock, tone adjustments, etc.)

The ignition or switched +12 volts is what actually turns the HU on with the ignition, and should be hooked to a ignition switched +12.

When they are "bridged" or hooked together to a constant +12 volts, then you have to manually turn the HU off when you get out of your vehicle. When they are hooked to a switched +12 volts, then you lose your memory everytime you turn the key off.

Hope this gives you a little more understanding on where you should have these wires hooked. In any situation, the best and most professional thing to do is buy a wiring harness for your vehicle,available at any local stereo shop. It is a plug that connects to your factory HU plug and you splice it together with your aftermarket HU plug ( the wires are 99% of the time color for color) and plug both ends in.

the only time i've seen it done for a reason was in the older BMW's and Audi's that didnt have a switched power source at the radio.... the problem combining these wires is that often the clock and/or illumination stays on waiting for the ign to be cycled off... which means the battery dies after a day or two....

spend the extra 20-30 minutes, separate them and wire them properly to switched and unswitched power.....

remember, there's two ways to do everything.... and one of them is properly......

Wow...another hack job by CC!

How hard is it to run a wire to the steering column or fuse panel and connect the ACC 12V+ like it's supposed to be?

A friend of mine paid for a pro install for a $500 clarion and they left one of those unhooked, it worked for a week before it died completly! The shop manager apologized and was rather surprized that it even worked at all. I told him to save his $35 next time and leave it to the man.

I could be wrong, but I do believe that the BATT or yellow + wire is the main source of current and the ACC red wire is just an 'enable' voltage, much like the amplifiers with the power and remote connections.  For this reason, the BATT + wire and ground should be connected to something solid.

I think Calling the connection of those to wires together a hack job is a little excessive..

Some people want their stereo compleatly sepereated from the Vehicles wiring..

I think there is also an issue on new GM cars with the DataBuss II system...or whatever it's called.

Insted of ignition...BCM tells the radio to come on via the purple databus wire.

Thus, you really need to get those Databus adapter/harnesses to get everything to work happily with the car's computer...so maybe this bridging the wires is a ghetto way around this?

Ravendarat wrote:

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As was said above, its not like this was a hard thing to correct, I dont car what kinda car it was, it couldnt have taken that long to do even if they just wanna tap into the sterring column wires and fuse it. So simple and yet still ignored. I tell ya, some peoples children :)

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Calm down....I wasn't condoning this...but rather was trying to think what could possibly cause someone to even WANT to do this let alone CONSIDER this.