I have an aftermarket head unit wired into where the old tape deck went..... and the four speakers powered by the back amplifiers do not work. Should the cd player be wired to the connectors the stock cd player was? And on the rectangular connector for the stock cd player, what is the solid blue wire for?

 

I'm looking to replace my HU (460). From what i've been told by the monkeys at best buy and circuit city, if you want to use the rear speakers you need to rewire them so that the amps are bypassed (thus only your aftermarket HU will power them, which is fine assuming its a decent unit). However, there is supposedly an adapter harness that you can get that allows you to go thru the amp. They tried special ordering it for me but then called back and said they couldnt. I got the part number from them and found it online myself for $13. I havent tried it; I'm not sure if its a good solution (that's what brought me here in the first place), but I do know that if you just replace a Mach 460 like any normal deck in any other normal car, the rear speakers will not work because of the factory amps. So far, I've heard of 3 options - replacing the amps with aftermarkets, getting this harness, or rewiring the rear speakers.

anyone have any other solutions - by all means, post them. My 460 **** the bed, and, though my car sounds beautiful, I cant stand driving with no music!

As for the blue wire - I believe that's usually REM (remote), and would be hooked into an amp for subs. So, probably not applicable to your project. Dont quote me though, it might be different on your deck. You can probably look up the key for your deck online and find out for sure.

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Rewire is twice as good as the adapter with all current head units. The adaptors are also rated at 35 peak watts and most decks will overpower that also. Both the factory amps and the amps in the new HU will be a solid state IC or possible mosfet with new decks so your far better off anyway. In no case are you worse off.